


Death Eaters and Dentists

by beepotter



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-24
Updated: 2016-10-20
Packaged: 2018-08-10 20:53:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 36,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7860712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beepotter/pseuds/beepotter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>6th Year AU. </p>
<p>After a heartbreaking summer romance in Muggle London, Hermione returns to sixth year feeling distinctly put out. When Draco Malfoy finds out about Hermione's Muggle ex-boyfriend, she duels him in the hallway and ends up in detention with him every day for a month. Will the two survive it?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Hogwarts Express

Hermione had never been less pleased to see the Hogwarts Express at King’s Cross. She knew Harry and Ron would be waiting for her inside, but somehow, she just couldn’t muster up any excitement. Instead of hearing the train’s whistle, she kept hearing, _I don’t want to date a girl in boarding school_ rushing around her head like heavy metal music, and instead of feeling her parents’ gentle hugs, she felt the way Stuart’s hand had pressed into her own the first time he’d gotten the nerve to tell her he liked her.

“You’re going to be all right, Hermione,” her mum told her, squeezing her shoulders reassuringly. “Breakups are hard, but you’re a strong girl.”

Hermione nodded, plastering a small smile on her face. It took everything she had.

“All right, cupcake, best get on the train before you miss it,” her dad said, bending down slightly to kiss her cheek. “Write us, please.”

“I always do, Dad,” she said, her voice falsely cheery. Her mum seemed to suspect that her happy façade was just that, a façade, but all she could do was frown slightly and hug her only child goodbye. After all, she had a train to catch.

“We love you!” her mum called as Hermione stepped onto the train, heaving her trunk in behind her.

“I love you too,” Hermione said back, this being the only thing she had meant wholeheartedly. She waved for a moment, and then she turned the corner into the aisle of the train, losing sight of her parents, losing sight of the last bit of the Muggle world.

Stuart’s world.

She walked down the aisle, trunk in tow, looking in each compartment for Harry and Ron. She knew that she and Ron would have to head to the prefect’s compartment rather soon, but she wanted to find their compartment first to drop her things. Finally, about halfway down the train, she spotted Ron’s telltale red hair and slid open the glass door.

“Hermione!” the boys said at the same time, jumping up. Ron took her luggage from her immediately and put it on the luggage rack with ease. Hermione smiled at him. He was always eager to help her these days.

“Feels like it’s been ages,” Harry said, giving her a quick hug. “I’m not used to not seeing you over the holidays.”

“Nor am I!” said Ron, shaking his head. “How was your time in France with your parents?”

Hermione’s stomach squirmed slightly. She felt guilty about the lie she’d told the boys. Truthfully, she’d stayed in London all summer, only about twenty minutes away from the headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix, but they didn’t know that. She’d told them she’d gone on holiday with her parents in the south of France to avoid having to tell them about Stuart and to avoid telling them that she was skipping out on time with them _for_ Stuart, especially considering the fact that Harry was grieving Sirius’s death. It really had been quite selfish of her, she knew.

“It was lovely,” she said. “To be honest, I’m still pretty exhausted from it.”

“You do look a bit tired,” Ron said.

Hermione fought against rolling her eyes. Even if he’d become more helpful as of late, he was still classically tactless.

“You don’t have much of a tan either,” Harry said. “Did you actually spend any time outside, or did you keep your nose in a book the whole time?”

Latching onto Harry’s ready-made excuse, Hermione said, “Well, I did do quite a bit of reading…”

Harry snorted, and Ron said, “Figures.”

“Listen, Ron, we’d better get to the prefect’s compartment. I expect the meeting will be starting soon,” she said.

“Right,” Ron said, stepping out into the hallway. Hermione, who’d barely entered the compartment anyway, followed him back out.

“See you in a bit, Harry,” Hermione said, smiling weakly at her best friend.

She followed Ron’s lanky form down the aisle to the front of the train, where she knew the enlarged prefect’s compartment was. Once they were there, Ron slid the door open and gestured for Hermione to go in first, smiling goofily at her. She walked in looking at her feet to avoid his smile. It seemed he’d resolved to be much flirtier this year than in years past, and Hermione just didn’t think she could return the sentiment.

She took her seat. It seemed they were a bit early. Ernie McMillan and Hannah Abbott were there, but the new Hufflepuffs and all the Ravenclaw and Slytherin prefects had yet to show up.

“See, Hermione, there wasn’t really a rush,” Ron said, taking the seat next to her.

“Yes, well, I didn’t want to be late, Ronald,” she said, trying to keep the hiss out of her voice. After all, it wasn’t Ron’s fault she was in such a poor mood.

Once most of the prefects had filtered in, the Head Boy and Head Girl started their briefing. It was the same sort of stuff they’d been told last year. Hermione found herself unusually disinterested. Normally, she’d be sitting on the edge of her seat, never mind the boring nature of what was being said. Instead, she was gazing out the window. It looked like it might rain. Stuart loved the rain, she remembered.

One day, they’d been walking home from a park after a lovely day spent reading, her head in his lap, and it had begun to pour. She’d screamed, trying to cover her head with her hands, which was, of course, useless, and Stuart had laughed, grabbing her hand and running with her.

She couldn’t help but laugh once he pulled her under an awning. His dark skin was glistening with wet, and her hair was dripping. He pulled her in and kissed her, breathing in deeply. Her stomach turned over and over, just as it always did when he kissed her. She was consumed by him.

The noise of the compartment door sliding open pulled her out of her reverie. It was Malfoy. Late, of course. Typical. She rolled her eyes.

Melanie, the Head Girl, a Hufflepuff, said, “Really, Malfoy? Thanks for taking the time to join us.”

“My pleasure,” he said with his signature smirk. He plopped down in the seat directly across from Ron. Hermione groaned internally, knowing it wasn’t good that they’d be in such close proximity.

Sure enough, it only took seconds for Malfoy to say, “Weasley, tuck in those grotesquely long legs, would you? I don’t want your filth touching me.”

“Sod off, Malfoy,” Ron responded.

Hermione found herself rolling her eyes, not at Malfoy’s remark, which had been expected, but at the lack of creativity in Ron’s comeback. Didn’t he have anything better to say to someone who was obviously trying to give him a hard time?

“What are you looking at, Granger?” Malfoy said. Hermione was pulled out of her thought process about Ron’s lack of creativity.

“Nothing, obviously, since I’m looking at you,” Hermione said coolly under her breath.

Malfoy narrowed his eyes but uncharacteristically said nothing, just as Melanie said, “All right, you three, settle down,” and started back in on her boring spiel on banned objects and curfews. Hermione resumed looking out the window. It had started to rain, just as she’d thought it would. With every tiny water droplet that slid down the compartment window, she missed Stuart more and more. She was trying to recall his cologne when she felt that creepy sensation when someone is watching you. She whipped her head around, tearing herself away from the water droplets, and found Malfoy’s cool gray eyes staring at her.

She raised her eyebrows, not wanting to interrupt Melanie for a second time but wanting to ask him what he was looking at.

He shrugged, clearly deciding he didn’t want to derail the meeting either.

 _What has gotten into him?_ Hermione wondered. First, he had chosen not to respond to Hermione’s insult to him, and now he was staying respectfully silent during a meeting? What’s more, she’d caught him staring at her. Why?

When the meeting ended, Ron and Hermione headed back to their compartment and met up with Harry.

“How’d the meeting go?” Harry asked. He didn’t seem like he cared that much about the answer, but all the same, Hermione thought, it was polite to ask.

“Just Malfoy being a git as usual,” Ron said. Of course that’s all he’d taken away from the meeting. Then again, Hermione realized, she hadn’t taken much away from it either given the fact that she’d spent most of it staring at the rain.

“No surprise there,” Harry said.

“Hermione was pretty quiet,” Ron said, and Hermione’s eyes darted toward him.

“I wasn’t asked any questions, Ronald,” she said. “What would I have had to say?” What a time for Ron to choose to be observant.

He shrugged. “You normally rattle off a list of questions every time we meet with the prefects. You didn’t even really seem like you were paying attention.”

“Hermione Granger not paying attention at a prefect’s meeting?” Harry said. “Are you sure you’re feeling all right? Maybe you caught something in France?”

Hermione glanced down at her hands in her lap. They were folded together, her fingers intertwined the way that she and Stuart’s had been only a couple of weeks ago. She didn’t know if she could bring herself to tell the boys about Stuart. Ron, for one, had clearly decided to try being nicer to Hermione. Maybe he had hopes for a relationship. And Harry…well, she knew Harry would do his best to be helpful but ultimately be unhelpful, and she just didn’t want to deal.

“Maybe so,” she said. “I’ll see Madam Pomfrey about a Pepper Up potion tomorrow, once we’re all settled in.”

The boys took that as a good solution to the problem, never once imagining that Hermione might be dealing with something bigger, with heartbreak.

She and Stuart had known each other since they were children. They’d lived on the same street in London forever. When she was little, though, she hadn’t gotten much attention from anyone, Stuart included. After all, she was just the bookish girl in braces with dentists for parents who didn’t let her have any candy.

When he’d seen her this summer, though, she was sixteen and, he’d told her later, had really filled out nicely. Hermione had blushed hard when he’d said that.

She sighed, listening to the boys talk about Quidditch and remembering the way Stuart had once attempted to count all the freckles on her nose, giving up and kissing her instead.

“I think Malfoy is up to something,” Harry said, his tone sinister. This snapped Hermione back into the present.

“Why do you think that?” she asked.

“Well, Ron and I saw him this summer heading into Borgin and Burkes,” he said, as though this solved it.

“Going into a store doesn’t mean you’re ‘up to something,’” Hermione said, using her fingers to mime quotation marks.

“I’m going to keep an eye on him anyway,” Harry said, patting his pocket. She knew the Marauder’s Map would be in there.

“Suit yourself,” she said, shrugging. “Personally, I think that’s a great load of wasted time.”  

Hermione didn’t want to think about Draco Malfoy and whatever illicit behaviors he might be getting up to. She wanted to think about the deep brown of Stuart’s eyes, the way his eyebrows thatched together when he was trying to figure something out, and the security she felt when she was wrapped into his dark, toned arms.

She decided, then and there, that she wouldn’t be getting a Pepper Up potion tomorrow at all. No, instead, she would write a letter to Stuart and send it through the post in Hogsmeade. She had to make him see he’d made a mistake, that distance wasn’t that big of a deal for a relationship like theirs. She had to make him see reason. She missed him too much not to.


	2. Confrontation

Rays of morning sunlight streamed into Hermione’s bedroom. As a prefect, she was given her own room in the prefect’s wing. Ron, and the rest of the boys, were just on the other side of the prefect’s common room in their own hallway.

She stared down at the paper on her desk. She’d decided since this was going to Stuart that she should write it on regular paper with a normal ballpoint pen. It felt foreign writing something this way. She’d become so used to a quill and parchment over the past six years. She’d started writing before the sun had risen that morning, and she had written for a steady two hours, filling up four sheets of paper front and back.

She took a deep breath. She knew she needed to send it. She was terrified, and that told her it was probably the right thing. She knew her logical mind had a tendency to fight against things her heart wanted. It had happened in fourth year with Ron too, though, she admitted to herself now, she was sort of happy that can of worms hadn’t been opened.

She stood from her desk and stretched, deciding she would get dressed and head to Hogsmeade that morning. Sixth and seventh years were at liberty to go into the village whenever they pleased, something Hermione quite liked. Classes didn’t start for another two days, so she had plenty of free time. The hard part would be giving Harry and Ron the slip. She didn’t want them to know what she was up to, especially since she had very purposefully not told them about Stuart.

She went to her armoire and pulled out some dark skinny jeans and a white scoop neck long-sleeved t-shirt. The material was light, in case it got warmer than expected, but Hermione chilled easily and therefore didn’t want to risk a short-sleeved shirt. When she was finished getting ready, she grabbed her bag and the letter and left her room.

She walked quickly out into the prefect’s common room, which was decorated with things from all the various houses. Banners from each, different colored throw pillows, and small knickknacks on tables belonging to each of the houses. Much to her displeasure, she saw Malfoy was a few strides ahead of her. He must be heading to breakfast.

She began walking toward the exit, an inconspicuous portrait of some water lilies, and as soon as Malfoy heard her steps, he whipped around.

“Oh, it’s just you, Granger,” he said, his voice low.

“Who else did you think it would be?” she asked. He posture had been defensive, as though he was afraid someone was sneaking up on him. She felt temporarily disarmed. She’d been prepared to come back at him with a snarky remark, but he hadn’t given her one. He sounded relieved, actually.

“No one,” he said, his eyes moving down to the papers clutched in her hands. “What are those?” he asked.

“It’s just a letter,” she said, shrugging.

“Why have you written it on that weird…parchment?” he asked, struggling to find a better word.

“This is what Muggles write their letters on,” she said.

“Oh, you’re writing letters to a Muggle, are you?” he said. His sneer was back. When Hermione scowled but didn’t answer, he said, “Probably to your parents, then?”

She walked past him, opening up the portrait and heading into the hallway. He followed her. “If you must know, Malfoy,” she said, “I write my parents with a quill and parchment just like you do.”

He was a few strides behind her. She was trying to walk faster and faster, but her legs would only take her so quickly.

“Then who is that for, Granger?” he asked.

“Why do you care, Malfoy?” she said whipping around to face him, her voice icy.

“I don’t, not really,” he said with a nonchalant shrug. “I guess I just want to know what kinds of Mudblood connections you’ve still got going on.”

She did her best not to flinch at that word. She reminded herself it was just a word, just like any swear word. Unpleasant but avoidable. She could pretend he hadn’t said it.

“That’s really none of your business,” she said, and she turned to walk away.

“Accio Granger’s letter!” Malfoy cried, and Hermione’s eyes widened as she gasped.

“What in the hell do you think you’re doing?” she said, turning around and taking out her wand, pointing it directly at him.

His eyes were already scanning the pages. “‘Dear Stuart,’” he was saying in a sickening impression of her. “‘I’m writing to tell you I love you, to tell you I miss you, and to implore you to rethink things.’ Granger, did you have a Muggle _boyfriend?_ ” he asked. His mouth had dropped open into a wide, incredulous smile.

Hermione’s eyes burned, and she slashed her wand through the air. “Petrificus Totalus!” she screamed, but Draco’s, “Protego!” was too quick.

“Nice try, Granger,” he said. “That would have worked on your Muggle boyfriend, but not on me.”

“Incendio!” she yelled, wanting Malfoy’s precious blonde hair to catch fire.

Again, he blocked the spell. This time, his face reddened with anger. “How did it feel, Granger? Shagging a Muggle? I guess you don’t have any decent wizards to compare it to, do you?”

“Reducto!” she cried, wanting to blast him away from her, down the hall. She wanted to see him crumple against the stone wall.

He blocked her. “Cru—,” he said, but he was cut off by McGonagall rounding the corner, clearly having heard the ruckus. Hermione’s eyes were wide. Had he been about to use an unforgivable on her?

“What in the devil is going on here, Miss Granger, Mr. Malfoy?” McGonagall exclaimed.

“Granger decided to use me for firing practice, Professor,” Malfoy said, ready to throw Hermione under the bus as though he’d been a perfect angel.

McGonagall knew better. “And what did you do to provoke her?” she asked.

Hermione’s stomach sank. She didn’t want him to start reading the letter again. “Oh, just started perusing a letter Granger has written to her Muggle boyfriend,” he said, smirking. He did not seem at all bothered that they’d just been caught dueling in the hallways.

McGonagall eyed them both, seeming to have some pity in her eyes for Hermione. She wordlessly summoned the papers away from Malfoy and handed them back to Hermione.

“Provoked or not, dueling in the hallways is not permitted. You two will have detention together every night for the next month,” she said.

Hermione’s mouth fell open in protest, even though she knew she’d earned detention for forgetting herself and the rules that she so valued. “Professor, can’t we do our detentions separately?” she said, nearly begging.

“What, Granger, can’t stand to be in the same room with someone as attractive as me?” Malfoy said, winking at her.

“That is enough, Mr. Malfoy,” Professor McGonagall said, even more edge to her voice than normal. “I think it will do you two some good to do your detention together. As prefects, you need to learn to work together and in close proximity with each other. You can’t do that if you start hexing each other every chance you get.”

Hermione hung her head and stuffed the pages to Stuart back in her bag. She imagined just for a moment that she was attending school in London, that she could see Stuart after school every day, that she would never have to deal with Draco Malfoy, the foul, loathsome cockroach that he was.

Then again, in Muggle London, there was no Ron. There was no Harry. There was no magic. Despite it all, she knew this is where she belonged. Despite, even, Draco Malfoy.

Interrupting her thoughts, McGonagall said, “Come to my office this evening at 8 for your assignment. I expect you both to be _on time_ ,” she said, glaring at Malfoy as she said the last bit.

He was already swaggering off, saying, “Yes, Professor,” over his shoulder.

Hermione couldn’t believe the nerve of him! She glanced guiltily up at Professor McGonagall, who looked down at her and said, “You may go, Miss Granger.”

“Thank you, Professor. And, I really am sorry.”

“I know,” she said, and Hermione sensed an unusual softness in her voice.

Hermione walked away, deciding to head straight to Hogsmeade to mail the letter instead of going to breakfast first, in case Malfoy tried to intercept her again. As she walked out onto the grounds, breathing in the cool, crisp September air, she tried to let her frustrations with Malfoy leave her. She focused, instead, on the low way he’d asked who was there in the common room, the way he’d whipped around defensively, as though ready to fight. Who was Malfoy afraid of? She didn’t know why she cared, but it seemed that he had realized he’d let slip some insecurity because he’d then doubled up with the cruelty, with the name-calling, with the embarrassment. Malfoy was always awful, sure, but he’d never said anything to her about—she reddened, remembering what he’d said—about shagging anyone, Muggle or wizard.

Maybe Harry was right. Maybe Malfoy was up to something, something that had him scared.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer, for this chapter and all chapters: I do not own these characters or any of the fictional places mentioned here. This world will always belong to Jo Rowling.
> 
> Also, I am clearly playing with the Hogwarts castle layout and some of the rules since there is a prefects dorm and sixth and seventh years are allowed to go to Hogsmeade whenever they please. It's an AU, so I feel like I have those liberties!


	3. Detention

“That’s got to be a record,” Ron said with a snort. They were sitting in the Great Hall having lunch. After Hermione had mailed her letter to Stuart, she’d gotten a coffee in Hogsmeade and returned to her dorm, needing some time alone. She hadn’t resurfaced until lunchtime.

“Shut up, Ron,” she said, rolling her eyes.

“What did he take from you anyway?” Harry asked, looking up from his steak and kidney pie curiously.

Hermione’s heart raced. “A letter,” she said, trying to sound casual.

“Blimey, Hermione, you lost it just because Malfoy tried to take a letter to your parents?” Ron asked.

Hermione scowled. “I never said it was to my parents,” she said.

“Then who was it to?” Ron’s blue eyes were alight with curiosity.

Hermione thought fast. She decided on rolling her eyes and saying, “All right, it was to my parents, but what does that matter?”

Frankly, Hermione was surprised that Malfoy hadn’t made the contents of the letter common knowledge to the entire school by now. He’d had hours. When she’d walked into the Great Hall, she had figured there would be jeers from the Slytherin table, but there had been none. She’d glanced over curiously to see Malfoy sitting alone toward the end of the table, away from Parkinson, Crabbe, and Goyle. _Unusual,_ she’d thought, but she’d pushed it out of her mind when she sat down with Harry and Ron and knew she had to tell them about her month of detentions.

“I have to say, whatever it was that caused you to snap, I never thought I’d see the day when Hermione Granger would get a detention faster than Ron and me,” Harry said. “And a month’s worth, at that. Must have been some duel.”

“I hope you wiped the floor with him,” Ron added.

Hermione was on the verge of telling them that Malfoy had seemed on the verge of using an unforgivable on her, but for some reason, she didn’t want to. She looked up from her food and looked across the Hall, willing Malfoy to look up from his own plate. As though he’d heard her thoughts, he did. She stared at him, and he stared back. She noticed, for the first time, dark circles under his eyes. Was the Slytherin Prince having trouble sleeping, she wondered? In just a couple of seconds, he had looked back down at his plate, and she had looked back over at Ron and Harry. It was like it had never happened.

 

* * *

 

 

That night, just before eight o’clock, Hermione left her dorm and made her way into the prefects’ common room. Apparently Malfoy had decided to leave around the same time, because he was just exiting the boys’ hallway as she entered the common room. Awkwardly, they walked side by side in the direction of McGonagall’s office.

Hermione wanted to say something, wanted to yell at him and blame him, but she remembered those dark circles under his eyes and stayed quiet. She also thought it was rather odd that he wasn’t taking this opportunity to taunt her either. He had fallen back, walking a couple of paces behind her, and she found herself wondering what the back of her hair looked like.

 _What in the world?_ she asked herself. _Who cares what the back of your hair looks like. It’s Malfoy! Get it together, Hermione._ She shook her head.

“What?” he asked, breaking the silence at last when they were only a minute away from McGonagall’s.

“Huh?” Hermione asked dumbly.

“Why did you shake your head?” he asked.

She was surprised he’d noticed. “Oh, I just can’t believe I have detention before classes have even started,” she said, thinking up a lie quickly.

“Oh,” he said. She thought he’d elaborate, but he didn’t. Maybe he was too tired.

They entered McGonagall’s office. Hermione looked around to the room that was at once familiar and not. She hadn’t been there in a while. She took in the roaring fire, the red threadbare rug, and the couch and armchairs. McGonagall’s desk was toward the back of the room, and, of course, that’s where she was sitting.

“Ah, Miss Granger, Mr. Malfoy,” she said, looking down at her watch. “Right on time. Come, sit.” She gestured to two stiff-looking chairs directly in front of her desk. Hermione wished they could sit on the couch instead, but she did as she was told, taking a seat next to Malfoy.

“Since you two seem to have completely lost order this morning, I think for the next month, you can help restore some sense of order in the castle,” McGonagall said, surveying them over her glasses severely. “There are about thirty magically enlarged broom cupboards in this castle, as you well know. As you also know, the phrase ‘broom cupboard’ is something of a misnomer. These cupboards are full of all sorts of things. I want you to go to each broom cupboard and inventory them completely as well as organize the things inside of them. Without magic, of course.”

Malfoy groaned. Of course he’d complain that they weren’t allowed to use magic. She wanted to say she thought it’d be obvious they wouldn’t be able to, or else the job would be done in about two days. McGonagall wanted this to last a month, after all. A broom cupboard a day.

“Yes, Professor,” Hermione said, cutting across Malfoy’s rude noise. “We can do that.”

“Mr. Malfoy, do you have something to say?” McGonagall asked. Her tone was full of distaste.

“Of course not, Professor,” Malfoy said scathingly. “As Granger said, we can do that. Doesn’t sound like particularly difficult work.”

“No, just time consuming,” McGonagall said with a tight smile. “Here is a list of the locations of all the broom cupboards. Start at the top and work your way down. Go on, then. Get to work.”

Upon realizing she was dismissed, Hermione stood up promptly, smoothing her skirt. Malfoy lagged behind lazily, moving at his own pace. Hermione looked at the list. The first broom cupboard they’d be working on was in the dungeons. _Great,_ she thought. _We’ll probably freeze to death._

“Where are we headed?” Malfoy asked once they were out of McGonagall’s office.

“The dungeons. Should feel right at home for you,” Hermione said.

“Ha ha ha,” Malfoy said, rolling his eyes. “As a matter of fact, I have rather liked being in the prefects’ dorms.”

“Really?” Hermione said. “Don’t fancy being around your fellow snakes as much as you thought, then?” she asked. She wanted to keep the conversation from being friendly. She wanted to remind Malfoy she didn’t care about him, even if he was extra pale and even if the dark circles under his eyes were semi-worrying. What was going on with him? Why did he look like that, and why was he telling her even the most minute details about himself, such as his aversion to the dungeons?

 _Shake it off, Granger,_ she told herself. _Lose the curiosity._

“It’s rather cold down there,” he said blankly.

They walked in silence until they reached their assigned broom cupboard. Hermione took a deep breath and opened the door.

It was a complete wreck. There were a couple of brooms in there, sure, but the cupboard had been enlarged to a room about ten by ten feet, and it was full of all sorts of things: cauldrons, scales, old Potions phials, raggedy-looking textbooks, and more. By the looks of it, these were extra Potions things that had accumulated over years, building up in here without anyone to organize it.

“Lovely,” she said. “I suppose we should just dive right in, then.” She reached for her bag, pulling out a parchment and quill. “Maybe the best route would be to pull everything out and inventory it and then put it back in in some kind of order?” she asked, looking at Malfoy.

He shrugged. “Whatever you say, Granger. You’re sure to be much more familiar with doing this the Muggle way than I am.”

She reddened, wondering if he was going to latch onto the word “Muggle” to bring Stuart up again. She waited, but he didn’t, not yet anyway. She took a deep breath and stepped inside, grabbing a cauldron and heaving it out. Malfoy stepped in after her, mimicking her.

An hour later, they hadn’t killed each other, and they had everything out of the broom cupboard. Hermione had started the inventory list, and Malfoy was using the moment to lean against the wall, wiping his forehead on his sleeve.

“I don’t see how Muggles do it,” he said. “Without magic, I mean.”

Hermione was surprised at his tone. There wasn’t really any animosity. Just curiosity. Maybe a little admiration. “Yes, it’s not nearly as easy or pleasant,” she agreed, writing down “Half-full bottle of lacewing flies” onto their list.

Suddenly, she remembered being at Stuart’s house one afternoon with a pang. His mum was griping at him to clean his room. It was something of a sty, Hermione agreed privately, but she wouldn’t say that to him. She’d let his mum do the nagging.

“Can you believe her?” Stuart had asked, rolling his eyes and shutting the door.

Hermione was lounging on his bed and glanced around the room. It looked as though his hamper had exploded, and books were littered on random surfaces. “I know,” she said soothingly, gesturing for him to come over to her.

He landed on the bed next to her and nuzzled his head into her neck, kissing her lightly. Chills erupted immediately on her skin. She was helpless to it.

“A few shirts on the floor, and she acts like I’ve got a swamp growing in here,” he said against Hermione’s skin. His lips tickled her neck.

“Granger?” Malfoy asked. “Are you going to keep inventorying? If not, we’ll be here all night.”

“Right,” Hermione said, jotting down “Mostly empty Skele-Gro.”

Malfoy was studying her, which made her uncomfortable. He seemed to know, somehow, that she’d been thinking of Stuart, because he asked, “What was his name again?”

Hermione’s mouth set in a hard line. “Like I want to discuss anything with you, Malfoy,” she said coldly.

“Stuart, wasn’t it?” he asked, ignoring her. His tone wasn’t mocking this time.

She didn’t respond.

“What did you see in him?” Malfoy asked, and she knew he was having trouble imagining that anyone could see anything desirable in a Muggle, someone who had to do everything without magic, someone who didn’t come from this world.

 _I don’t come from this world,_ she wanted to remind him. _I knew a life without magic._ Of course she didn’t say those things, though. She had no reason to explain herself to Malfoy of all people. She hadn’t even told Harry and Ron about Stuart.

“Why haven’t you told anyone?” she asked him suddenly, ignoring his question.

Malfoy was caught off guard. “Oh, er, I don’t know,” she said awkwardly, shuffling his feet. She’d never seen him make such a movement. Most of his gestures were full of cockiness and overconfidence. She’d never seen him look embarrassed, except maybe when Moody had turned him into a ferret. Even then, though, he’d run away yelling, “My father will hear about this!” He hadn’t reddened or shuffled awkwardly, like he was doing now.

“It’s not like you,” she said bluntly.

“No, I suppose not,” he said, meeting her eyes. She tried not to look away, but the gray intensity was too much. She averted her eyes back to the parchment and wrote down another item. “I’m assuming you’re not complaining that I haven’t blabbed about it?” he asked.

She pulled her eyes away from the parchment and looked at him once again. Even though he was pale and had the dark circles, Hermione had to admit he’d come into the good looks that had been waiting behind his boyish face all these years. His shoulders had broadened out, and his pointy features had turned…angular. His hair wasn’t nearly as slicked back as it used to be. It was pushed back in a much more natural way.

“No, I’m not complaining,” she said quietly.

“I’m not planning on telling anyone, so as long as Weasley and Potter can stay quiet, I think your secret summer romance is safe, Granger.”

Hermione’s stomach turned over. “They don’t…” she started, and then cut herself off.

His eyes widened. “They don’t know?” he asked. “I didn’t know you kept things from them.”

“I—I don’t,” she said, backtracking.

“But you haven’t told them about this earth-shattering boyfriend you had this summer?” he asked incredulously.

“No,” she said curtly. She returned her attention to the list. She was nearly done. She added the last few items, and then said, “It’s time to put this stuff back in there.”

“Fine,” he said.

They started heaving the things back in, putting all the cauldrons together, all the Potions ingredients together, grouping the empty phials, and, at last, putting the few broomsticks together leaning against a wall.

“I suppose this is organized,” she said, looking at their work.

“As organized as this mess is going to get,” he agreed. They closed the door and started walking back up.

“I think we should drop this inventory list at McGonagall’s, to show we actually did the work,” she said. “It’s on the way anyway.”

He nodded. When they got to McGonagall’s office, though, the door was closed. That wasn’t all that surprising. It was nearly eleven o’clock. Hermione folded the parchment and slid it under the door for McGonagall to find in the morning.

They started walking back up to the fifth floor where the prefects’ dorms were.

“Granger,” Malfoy said, stopping suddenly. “I won’t tell about Stuart.”

For one, Hermione was shocked that he’d used Stuart’s name instead of making some kind of reference to him being a filthy Muggle. Secondly, she was astounded that he seemed to want to reiterate that he was going to keep her secret for her.

“Er, thanks,” she said, scrunching her eyebrows at him in confusion. “I do appreciate that.”

“I know it must be kind of a big deal if you haven’t told the wonder twins,” he said.

Hermione swallowed. How could she explain that she hadn’t told them because it hurt too much, not because she didn’t love or trust them? How could she explain that Stuart had made her feel adored all summer only to make her feel disposable at the end?

Disposable, she thought. That’s what he’d made her feel.

And she’d sent him a letter begging for him back.

Suddenly, she felt disgusted with herself. A boy had made her feel like next to nothing, someone who could be replaced, and instead of being the girl she knew she was, she had begged for him? It wasn’t like her. She had forgotten herself, just as she had when she’d dueled Malfoy in the hallway.

“Yes,” she said. “It’s a big deal.” She stood up a bit straighter, looking ahead.

When they reached the dorms and walked into the common room, they looked at each other awkwardly for a moment. Malfoy seemed to want to say something, but instead he just stared at her, his gray eyes making her skin erupt in goosebumps. Why did his gaze make her feel like that? Why did she feel so scrutinized? Why did she care?

“Goodnight, Granger,” he said finally.

She meant to say goodnight to him as he walked away, but she just stared dumbfounded. Who knew Malfoy could be so damn polite?


	4. The Gift

When Hermione woke up the next morning, she knew two things: for one, classes would start the next day. She was relieved that some semblance of normalcy would return with the start of classes. She could stick her nose inside of her books and stop thinking so much about Stuart. And that was the second thing she knew: she had to write Stuart and take back what she’d said in the letter. Not that she loved him. No, that much had been true. She needed to take back her begging. It wasn’t her, and Malfoy, somehow had reminded her of that.

She went to her desk and sat down. It felt so similar to the morning before, before Malfoy knew about Stuart, before she had been assigned a month’s worth of detentions. But it felt different. Of course she still loved Stuart. That sort of thing doesn’t just go away overnight (literally), but she suddenly remembered who she was: Hermione Granger. Brightest witch of her age, by all accounts.

She wrote:

_Stuart,_

_You will have received my first letter probably yesterday, and I’m sorry to say, I need to take parts of it back. I love you, you know that. I don’t know if you ever felt as strongly as I did, and that’s okay. Sometimes things aren’t fully reciprocated. If you had loved me as much as I love you, I don’t think you could have broken things off so easily._

_But you did. That’s the thing. And that tells me it’s not supposed to work out. Sometimes, you get a fleeting moment of something beautiful, and you have to accept it for what it is, even if it hurts to acknowledge that it is, indeed, only an instant in the grand scheme of things._

_Thank you for a beautiful summer. I won’t be writing you again, and when I’m home for the holidays, it’s probably best that we don’t see each other. It would just be too hard for me. I hope you’ll understand._

_Love,_

_Hermione_

She stared at the letter, feeling hollow. It felt so cool and collected, and inside, she felt mixed up and scrambled. But the letter was her, through and through. It was honest and direct, and it was logical. If he didn’t feel as strongly, she should try to move on. That was logic, right?

She got dressed and decided to head to Hogsmeade for the second morning in a row, hoping she didn’t run into anyone on the way. Godric knows she didn’t need any more detentions piled on top of the ones she’d already earned.

Thankfully, the common room was empty. She peeked out of the water lily portrait before heading into the hall and didn’t see anyone there either. It was quite early. Everyone probably wanted a lie in on the last day before classes started. Everyone except Hermione Granger.

She walked down the halls reveling in the silence. She was so used to the hustle and bustle of Hogwarts. She didn’t get much time to appreciate the stillness of it. She ran her hands along the stone walls, taking in their coarseness. They were cold, and yet somehow, the whole castle always felt inherently warm to her. It felt like home. Again, she was reminded that this is where she was supposed to be. This is the world she belonged in. She couldn’t believe anything, especially a summer romance, had made her question that.

Still, she remembered Stuart’s deep brown eyes and his smooth, caramel skin, and she knew Hogwarts wasn’t the only thing that was inherently warm.

She shuddered at the thought, shook her head, and kept walking, faster than before.

Once she reached the post office in Hogsmeade, she took a deep breath before opening the door. A tinkling bell sounded.

“Back again, love?” a pretty young witch behind the counter said.

“’Fraid so,” Hermione said, frowning slightly.

“And up early too. Didn’t want to enjoy the last day before classes?”

Hermione shook her head. “Early bird gets the worm, and all that.”

The witch smiled. “You must be Muggleborn, sending all these letters through the Muggle post?”

Hermione nodded somewhat uncomfortably, wondering if this witch was the type to look down on her for her bloodline.

“So am I!” she said brightly. “That’s what made me want to work here after Hogwarts. I graduated, what was it, five, six years ago? Couldn’t stand to be too far from the castle or the bustle of the school.”

Hermione smiled. “I don’t blame you,” she said. “It’s hard to leave it, isn’t it?”

She mailed the letter, said goodbye to the witch behind the counter, and, just as she’d done yesterday, decided to pop into the Three Broomsticks for a coffee to-go. Most people didn’t realize the Three Broomsticks had coffee, since they went there for butterbeer, firewhiskey, and things of that sort. Hermione, though, had randomly asked Madam Rosmerta once, and she’d been pleasantly surprised with the answer.

She walked into the nearly empty bar. Of course most people weren’t at a bar on Sunday mornings. She walked up to the counter and ordered her coffee. Rosmerta put it in a travel mug for her, somehow intuiting that, just as yesterday, Hermione wouldn’t be staying. When Hermione turned around to leave, she bumped right into none other than Draco Malfoy.

“Oh!” she said, precariously balancing her coffee mug in her hand. “What are you doing here?” It came out harsher than she’d meant it to, but she had nearly had hot coffee spilled all over her!

“Why is that any of your business, Granger?” he asked coldly.

“I just—you just startled me, that’s all,” she said with a shrug. She made to walk toward the door.

Malfoy stepped in front of her. “What are _you_ doing here?” he asked. “Weren’t you just in Hogsmeade early yesterday morning?” His look was pointed.

Hermione felt her cheeks go red. “Yes, I had to send another letter,” she said. Why had she even told him that?

He lowered his voice. “Granger, if you keep pelting him with letters, you’re going to come off as desperate.”

She looked around to make sure no one had heard. There wasn’t anyone there who would care anyway, and, she noted with some appreciation, Malfoy had spoken quietly enough that no one heard anyway. “I wasn’t sending him another…another letter like the one you so nosily saw yesterday.”

“A desperate love note, you mean,” he offered.

Her face was growing more deeply red, but it was out of anger now, not embarrassment. “Whatever you want to call it,” Hermione said, “Not that you should have seen it at all.”

He had the decency to look at least a little scolded here. “True,” he said. He didn’t sound very sorry. “So what did the letter today say?”

Her mouth dropped open. “What in the world makes you think I am going to discuss this with you?”

“Because I am the only one who knows about it, Granger,” he said, smirking. God, it wasn’t right for someone so annoying and awful to look so good when they smirked.

She shook her head.

“There you go again,” he said, his smirk turning into something of a frown. “Do you frequently shake your head for a reason? Maybe it’s a nervous tic?”

“Sod off, Malfoy,” she said, realizing she sounded just as uncreative as Ron normally did when interacting with Malfoy.

He chuckled. “For a moment there, I thought you were Weasley, with that sharp wit.”

How did he always know what she was thinking?

“Your wit wasn’t so sharp when you were a bouncing white ferret, Malfoy,” she said. “Careful, or someone might just…let their wand slip.”

He narrowed his eyes. She’d struck a nerve. He clearly didn’t like to be reminded of his time as a fluffy little animal. “Careful, Granger, or _someone_ might just let slip about your Muggle boyfriend.”

Hermione stared straight into his gray eyes. She remembered who she was, just as she had to do before she wrote this morning’s letter to Stuart. She was Hermione Granger. Brightest witch of her age. Who was Draco Malfoy, anyway? Just a Slytherin with too much confidence. Just a cockroach.

“You don’t have any power over me,” she said, still staring directly into his eyes. She refused, this time, to be the one to break eye contact. They were speaking lowly; no one in the bar seemed to notice that they were having something of a confrontation near the door. But the tension between them was so thick, Hermione thought she might be able to reach out and grab it, stick it in her pocket.

“Oh really?” he said, his voice suddenly a purr. Hermione felt chills on her arms but ignored them.

“Really,” she said adamantly.

He leaned down so his mouth was only an inch or so from her ear. “We’ll see about that,” he whispered. She tried her best not to, but she still shuddered. “See you in detention tonight, Granger,” he said, moving aside so she could leave. She took the opportunity and practically ran out of the Three Broomsticks and back up to school.

What had he meant by that? _We’ll see about that?_ What was he trying to prove?

 

* * *

 

That night, she was unsurprised to find him waiting for her in the prefects’ common room. She sighed loudly.

“What, Granger?” he asked, his voice immediately defensive. He stood up from the armchair he’d been waiting for her in.

“I don’t see why we need to walk down together,” she said, rolling her eyes.

He smirked. She really, really wished he would stop doing that. It was a tad annoying, she told herself. “I wouldn’t want to let a lady walk through the castle on her own,” he said.

She snorted. “Right, because I count as ‘a lady’ to you, you who’ve called me ‘Mudblood’ as long as you’ve known me.” She rolled her eyes.

“I don’t know, Granger, you certainly seem to be turning into something of a lady,” he said. She glanced over at him and saw his eyes raking over her body. She blushed and felt the deepest urge to cover herself, but her arms weren’t enough to do it.

“Malfoy!” she said. “Don’t be disgusting.”

He laughed. “Don’t be such a prude. Have a sense of humor, would you?”

“You’re one to talk about a sense of humor, skulking around here like a ghost with those dark circles!” she said. She realized as soon as she’d said it that she shouldn’t have. He cut his eyes to her dangerously.

“I don’t look any different than I normally do,” he said quickly. His voice was low again.

“You look,” she said slowly, “Like you had a hellish summer.”

“At least I didn’t get dumped by a Muggle,” he said. He was back to being cold, but Hermione knew he was deflecting, trying to avoid the topic.

“Whatever, Malfoy,” she said.

Detention that night was a quiet affair. He kept his distance from her, certainly not coming as close to her as he had in the Three Broomsticks. She supposed she would have to see what he’d meant by “we’ll see about that” a different time.

Why’d he gotten so defensive about his tired appearance? It wasn’t like him to let anyone, especially Hermione, affect him so much. He stayed sullen and quiet after her remark, doing the inventory himself that night and allowing her to lean against the wall like he had the night before. She watched the way his hand scrawled gracefully across the page. Aristocratic grace, she thought, imagining a boy Malfoy being taught to write in the elegant script he now used.

A boy Malfoy. Now _that_ was a weird thought.

When they went back to the common room a couple of hours later, he didn’t say goodnight to her as he had the night before. In fact, he didn’t say anything at all. He walked off, not even turning around to look at her.

Not that she cared, of course.

In fact, the next week’s worth of detentions proceeded similarly. They switched off every night as to who would do the inventorying, and they worked together to move the stuff in and out of the cupboards. Hermione sure as hell wasn’t going to try to make a personal conversation with him, and he didn’t seem to be interested in making any more with her. He didn’t even bother teasing her about Stuart.

Classes had started, and, just as she’d predicted, Hermione didn’t have much time to think about her heartbreak over Stuart or whatever was going on with Malfoy that was making him look so tired. Between keeping up with her own homework, making sure that Ron and Harry didn’t completely bungle theirs, _and_ doing two to three hours of detention a night, she was completely exhausted.

A week after classes started, Hermione was sitting in the Great Hall with Harry and Ron when the post came in. She wasn’t expecting anything. She’d just had a letter and a small care package from her mum the day before. So she was surprised when she saw two owls supporting a very large package flying directly to her. Her eyes went wide.

The owls dropped the package indignantly, clearly upset at how much they’d had to carry. Hermione, however, was mortified at what she was seeing: a giant stuffed animal—a monkey—in boxer shorts with hearts all over them, a basket full of candy, and an enormous card that read, “I’m Sowwy!”

Taped to the front of it all was a note with what Hermione recognized as her mother’s handwriting. Furiously, she ripped the note off and read it.

_Hermione,_

_Stuart came by and dropped this off yesterday. He said he didn’t have an address to send it to you himself, and, well, I couldn’t give him one, could I? So I said I would send it on for you. I’m so sorry. I know it’s a bit much, but he seems to have meant well._

_Love,_

_Mum_

Hermione knew she should feel happy that Stuart was reaching out to her, but all she could feel were what felt like a million pairs of eyes on her. Without even realizing what she was doing, her own eyes flicked up immediately to the Slytherin table. Sure enough, Malfoy was staring directly at her. He looked somewhat amused.

“Hermione, what the bloody hell is this?” Ron asked, reaching for the monkey.

“Don’t—,” she started to say, but it was too late. Just as she’d feared, when he grabbed the monkey’s hand, he’d pressed a button hidden inside, and the monkey had started to sing. Loudly.

“How sweet it is to be loved by you. It’s like honey to a bee, babe. How sweet it is to be loved by you.”

Hermione had possibly never blushed harder. People around her were snickering. Harry was gaping at her, and Ron was looking at her like he’d never seen this before.

“‘I’m sowwy?’” he read from the card. “It doesn’t seem like your mum sent you these, Hermione.” He sounded angry, though, Hermione thought indignantly, he had no right to be.

Hermione waved her wand wordlessly, banishing the basket, the monkey, and the card to her dorm, something she’d seen in _The Standard Book of Spells, Grade 6,_ but hadn’t tried yet. Despite it all, she felt a bit pleased that she had been able to do a spell like that non-verbally.

“I have to go,” she said, gathering her bag and standing up.

“Hermione,” Harry said. “Wait.”

“No, I’ll catch up with you all later,” she said.

She hardly made it out of the Hall before she burst into tears. She ran into the nearest bathroom, which, of course, was Myrtle’s bathroom, but she honestly couldn’t care less at the moment. She felt mortified. Everyone had seen it. Malfoy had seen it. He would be relentless now. And she would have to explain to Harry and Ron about Stuart. They’d be upset she hadn’t told them, they’d be upset she’d lied about vacationing with her parents, and she knew Ron would be upset for entirely different reasons.

She realized suddenly she hadn’t even read the card from Stuart. She dried her eyes and looked at her watch. She still had a half hour before her first class, when she would have to face the world again. She decided to make a mad dash up to her dorm and read what he had to say. When she got there, the common room was blissfully empty, most people having already headed down for class. She threw open the door to her bedroom and opened the card, which was waiting for her neatly on her bed. Trying to ignore how impressed she was with her own spellwork, she read:

_Hermione,_

_I’m a dolt. I know it. I was so foolish to say we couldn’t make this work. After all, we can talk on the phone, right? And you’ll be back at the holidays. There is no reason a little distance has to come between us. Hell, maybe I can even come up and visit you on a weekend, if you’ll ever tell me where this bloody school of yours is. I got your second letter. Don’t give up, not yet. Let’s try to make this work. You have my number. Call me._

_Love,_

_Stuart._

Her stomach dropped. She knew full well she couldn’t call him. He couldn’t come visit her. He was wrong. He wasn’t foolish to think it couldn’t work. She was foolish to have ever suggested it could. Her heart broke, but she knew it was true. She did her best not to start crying, but she failed. She allowed herself five minutes to lie down on the bed and cry before wiping her face and heading off to class.

She was Hermione Granger, after all. Hermione Granger didn’t miss class because she was upset about a boy. Hermione Granger hardly missed class for anything.

When she sat down in Charms between Harry and Ron, they both looked at her expectantly, and she resolutely took out her textbook, opening to the appropriate page. She’d ignore their stares for as long as she could, she decided.

When she saw Malfoy at lunch, though, she knew that was one stare she wouldn’t be able to avoid for long.

Detention that evening was certainly going to be interesting.


	5. The Transfiguration Wing

“Hermione, you know you’re not going to get out of explaining this to us, right?” Harry said impatiently over dinner.

Hermione was wolfing down her food, partially because she had homework to do before detention, but mostly because she was trying to avoid this exact conversation. She had carefully avoided Ron’s accusatory stare all day and reminded herself that he didn’t have any sort of claim over her.

“Yes, yes,” she said. “But I really have to run right now. I have loads of work to do before detention.”

“We know full well you’ve already finished your Potions essay,” Ron argued.

“This is for Arithmancy,” Hermione shot back. That should work. They would have no idea what kind of workload she had for that class, since they’d never bothered to take it.

Harry rolled his eyes. “Whatever, Hermione. We _will_ get this out of you.”

But Hermione had already gathered up her bag and started to walk away, turning to look over her shoulder as she left and giving a little wave. She stared straight ahead as she walked out of the Hall, carefully avoiding the Slytherin table. She knew Malfoy was probably waiting to tease her relentlessly in just a few hours. She wasn’t anxious to get that started early.

She barricaded herself in her dorm for the next few hours. Truth be told, she didn’t get much of her Arithmancy work done, but she was successful at avoiding everyone.

Just before eight, she sighed and headed out to the common room. Sure enough, there was his blonde head, appearing over the top of his favorite armchair. When he heard her approach, he stood up. He was already smirking. Her stomach dropped.

“Eventful day, eh, Granger?” he said. “I do hope you’ll be able to focus on our task tonight.”

Hermione’s eyes flashed. “I’m never not able to focus,” she said with a small growl in her voice. They were walking out of the portrait into the hallway.

“Oh right,” he said, rolling his gray eyes. “Because you’re little Miss Perfect Hermione Granger.”

She scoffed. “I didn’t say that.” Pause. “But I’m exceedingly competent at most tasks.”

He laughed, and the sound surprised her. It was something like a bark. She wasn’t sure she had ever heard him really laugh. Usually, his laugh was a mocking laugh. “Exceedingly competent at most tasks,” he said, still laughing. “Are you writing your resume here, Granger?”

She rolled her eyes and ignored him, walking a few steps ahead of him. “We’re headed to the Transfiguration wing today,” she said, deciding to change the subject.

“I know that,” he said. “Unlike the company you normally surround yourself with, I am also exceedingly competent at most tasks.”

She turned around to glare at him and was met with a wink. She scoffed.

After a few minutes, they’d reached the Transfiguration wing, and Hermione was eager to get to work. She opened up the broom cupboard and groaned. This one was full of even more random objects, objects that she remembered Transfiguring over the years, like pincushions, feathers, decorative boxes, and the like. There were lots of empty animal cages which she knew must have once housed the various animals Hogwarts students used to practice Transfiguration as well. Of course, there were a few brooms.

“Let’s get started then,” Hermione said briskly. “I don’t want to be here all night.”

“Somewhere to be?” Malfoy asked, starting the process of pulling everything out of the cupboard.

Hermione joined in, pulling out a box of pillows. “Not exactly,” she said. “I just don’t want to spend all night in a dusty broom cupboard with you.”

“Now that, Granger, is something many women would give their wand arms for,” he said with a smirk.

“Ugh,” she said. “Are you ever not completely full of yourself?”

Choosing to ignore her, he said, “No really, what are you going to do? Go back to your dorm and cry over Stuart? Or have you already written him and told him you would take him back?”

Hermione’s stomach flipped over. She didn’t want to talk about this, especially not with Malfoy, but he was the only one in this world who knew anything about it. And, she reasoned with herself, it would probably be better than discussing it with Ron. At least with Malfoy she could keep things sarcastic and cold. Ron would be full of…feelings. If there was one person she could count on not to have feelings, it was Draco Malfoy.

“I’m not taking him back,” she said quietly.

He raised an eyebrow. “Really? But just a week ago, you were all for the idea of trying to make it work.”

“Yes, well,” she said, her voice sounding rather small, “I realized it wasn’t very realistic.”

Malfoy nodded, catching Hermione’s meaning right away. “I would say not,” he said. “I mean, he can’t exactly come up here and see you. You can’t even tell him anything about your life. What kind of relationship would that be?”

Hermione was shocked that Malfoy was actually saying something helpful, something that reinforced the decision she’d already made, rather than taking this perfectly good opportunity to tease her.

“Er, yes,” she said, uncomfortable with agreeing with him. “That’s more or less what I decided.”

“Have you written him back yet?”

“No.” She paused. “I’m not going to.”

“Wow, Granger, I didn’t think you had it in you,” he said, lifting an empty cage and carrying it out the cupboard door.

“Had what in me?” she asked when he’d returned.

“The ability to be so cold,” he said simply.

Her eyes widened. “Cold?” she asked. “I’m not—I mean, I don’t mean to be…cold.”

“He sent you a giant card saying he was sorry and a ridiculous package begging you back, and you aren’t even going to respond to him? That’s—well, that’s something I’d probably do, not to respond,” he said. He was staring straight at her. He never seemed afraid to keep eye contact. She noticed again the dark circles under his eyes and frowned.

“Malfoy, are you all right?” she asked suddenly.

“What?” he said, caught off guard. “Of course I am.”

“Okay…” she said hesitantly.

“Do you have something else to say?” he asked. His voice was back to its signature iciness.

“You just…you seem different, that’s all,” she said with a shrug, trying to come off as nonchalant and uninterested as possible.

“I’ve already told you. Nothing has changed.” All traces of that barking laugh she’d heard earlier were gone. His face was a smooth slate. He wasn’t giving anything away.

“All right,” she said, picking up another one of the empty cages and going to walk past him toward the door. Suddenly, she bumped into him, and he winced, grabbing his left arm.

“Watch it, will you?” he asked. He was rubbing his forearm above his sleeve. Hermione watched his movement with her eyebrows thatched together. There was no way Harry was right, she told herself. She must have just bumped him harder than she thought she had. There was no way that Malfoy was a…a…

“Sorry,” she said, moving quickly out into the hallway and dropping the cage to the ground. She leaned against the wall, breathing deeply, trying to process what she’d just seen.

“Any day now, Granger,” he called.

She took a deep breath and returned back inside the nearly empty cupboard. He was leaning against a shelf.

“Taking a break?” she asked, trying to keep the edge out of her voice.

“I think we’ve earned one,” he said reasonably.

Hermione didn’t know what to say. As hard as she tried to avert them, her eyes were drawn to his left forearm as though she was trying to see through the fabric of his white oxford button-down. _It’s just plain, pale skin underneath there,_ she told herself adamantly. _There is nothing there. There is nothing there._

“What are you thinking about?” he asked her suddenly.

Again, she was struck by the fact that he was asking her personal questions. Something had definitely changed about Malfoy over the summer, but, she reminded herself, it was definitely not that he had become a Death Eater. What would Voldemort want with him? He was sixteen.

She remembered suddenly that his father was in Azkaban. That was probably what had him looking so tired: stressing about his dad. She then realized that she had been involved the night that his father had gotten sent to prison. Shouldn’t Malfoy hate her? Why was he asking her more personal questions than ever and being halfway civil to her at least half the time? If she was in his very expensive shoes, she would be ignoring herself.

“Nothing,” she said, looking away from his face.

He stepped away from the shelf and crossed the room, standing only a foot away from her. “Don’t lie, Granger,” he said, his voice suddenly intense.

She wanted to look away. She really did. But she couldn’t help but stare up at him, her eyes glued to his face. Despite the dark circles and the increased paleness, he was so easy to look at, she thought. In fact, the added edge that the new features gave him might even make him easier to look at. He looked…dangerous, constantly conflicted.

“I’m—I’m not lying,” she said breathlessly. Her voice was barely more than a whisper.

“Stop,” he said suddenly. His voice was low too. Almost hoarse.

“Stop what?” she asked. Stop looking at him? She wasn’t sure she could.

“Stop trying to figure me out,” he said. He was so close, she could hear his breathing.

“Why?” she asked, surprised by her question. Why didn’t she just deny that she was trying to figure him out. Was she?

“Because you’re probably the only person in this place that actually could,” he said. He leaned forward suddenly and breathed in deeply. Was he smelling her hair? She could feel the hairs on her arms standing on end, and she wasn’t sure she was breathing. She turned her head slightly. Their faces were only inches apart. He was staring her with intensity that made her uncomfortable, but she would never have said so. She didn’t want to break what was suddenly between them, even though she couldn’t have named it if she tried.

“Back to work,” he said suddenly, stepping carefully away from her.

She exhaled loudly. What the hell had all that been about?

For the rest of the evening, he kept a careful distance from her, never allowing their arms to brush, never standing within a few feet of her.

When they walked back up to the common room after dropping their list at McGonagall’s office like they’d gotten used to doing, they were silent. They were both clearly thinking about what had happened in the broom cupboard, but neither seemed to be able to broach the subject. _You’re supposed to be a Gryffindor, Hermione,_ she reminded herself. _Have some courage. Ask him what that was._

She knew she wouldn’t, though. For some reason, she knew that if she acknowledged what had happened, it would never happen again, and as much as she didn’t want to admit it, the rush it had given her was thrilling. She had seen something dangerous behind his gray eyes, and she wanted to figure out what it was.

Her thoughts carried her all the way to the common room. Just inside the portrait hole, before they’d even stepped properly into the common room, he turned around to face her, and her breath caught in her throat. Had he been thinking about what had happened the whole way back too? Was he feeling regretful? Embarrassed?

“You’re really not going to take Stuart back?” he asked.

She shifted her eyes uncomfortably. That wasn’t what she had been expecting, and she noted again that he hadn’t referred to Stuart as “the Muggle.”

“No, I’m not,” she said. She paused, trying to decide how much to divulge. “I loved him, I really did. I may still love him. I don’t know. But I belong in this world.”

“Our world,” Malfoy said, and Hermione’s eyes widened. Had he just grouped them together?

“Y—yes,” she agreed nervously.

She was suddenly aware how small the space they were in was, the space just behind the portrait. And was it her imagination, or had Malfoy stepped a bit closer? No, she could definitely feel his breath, less than a foot away from her face. She took a deep breath and smelled spearmint, one of her favorite scents. She had to fight not to smile.

Interrupting her thoughts about his potential choice of toothpaste, Malfoy suddenly crashed against her, closing the space between them, kissing her fiercely. She was completely caught off guard, and she was instantly breathless, her body coming alive for the first time in weeks. The first time, she realized, since the last time Stuart had kissed her like this.

Malfoy pressed her up against the portrait, his hands winding their way into her hair, and she kissed him back. She didn’t know why, but there was absolutely no denying that she was kissing him back. She was pressing her body into his frantically, and she could feel his toned stomach against her. She reached forward and touched it tentatively, and he groaned. The sound made the pit of her stomach clench unexpectedly.

As though the sound of his own groan had made him realize what he was doing, he suddenly pulled apart from her, running his fingers through his hair. He looked frantic, she thought.

“Er,” she began, not sure what to say. Was there anything to say?

“I have to go,” he said suddenly. He wasn’t meeting her eyes, something very unlike him. At that thought, she wondered when she had figured out what was like him or unlike him. She shook her head.

“There you go again, shaking your head,” he added, a ghost of his normal smirk lingering on his lips. He was trying to regain composure. She realized she had shaken him from his normal cool, composed attitude, and she couldn’t fathom it. She couldn’t fathom any of this.

She reached forward, not sure why she was doing what she was doing. It was as though they were magnets. The space between them was begging to be closed. She met his eyes and placed her small hand on his chest, just above his heart. She could feel it thundering away in there. “Malfoy…” she began.

“I have to go, Granger,” he said, stepping once again out of her reach. This time, he stuck to his word, walking away from her. Before he entered the boys’ hallway, he turned around and said, “Goodnight,” quietly, so quietly she wasn’t sure if he’d said it at all.


	6. The Astronomy Tower

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey all! So I have a weekend job that takes me pretty much in the middle of nowhere, so I likely won't ever be able to post on the weekend. However, as you might have noticed, I try to make up for that by posting several lengthy posts throughout the week. Hope you enjoy this one!

When Hermione woke up the next day, she still felt dizzy from Malfoy’s domineering kiss the night before. She wondered if she had dreamed it all, but somehow, she knew it was real. She couldn’t have dreamt up the electricity that had lit up her whole body.

All she knew was she wanted more of it. As stupid as she knew it was, she wanted it to happen again because it was the only thing to make her feel alive since Stuart left her. Now that she’d come to terms with the fact that, though she still loved Stuart, their relationship wasn’t possible at this time in her life—as long as she was at Hogwarts—she needed something else to bring her back to life. Who knew it would be Malfoy that did it?

She shuddered under her covers at that thought. It was as though she’d been taken over by someone else entirely, someone who could look past the years of bullying, the blood purity mania, and just enjoy him physically. She knew this wasn’t like her, but she didn’t really care.

So that would be all it was, she decided. A physical thing. Surely he would be fine with that. He wouldn’t want to develop some kind of emotional attachment to a Mudblood, she thought with a scowl.

She would establish these terms at detention tonight. In the meantime, she knew, it was probably time to come clean with Harry and Ron about Stuart. Well, come as clean as she was willing to. They didn’t need all the gory details.

She walked down to breakfast resolved, head held high, shoulders back. She was not going to be afraid of her two best friends. They could be annoyed at her for not spending part of the summer with them if they wanted, but she was at perfect liberty to date whomever she pleased. As she reminded herself of this, she sheepishly wondered who she was trying to convince: them or herself?

When she sat down across from Harry and Ron, they both looked up at her expectantly. Her stomach flipped over, this time not at the prospect of telling them about Stuart, but because she was terrified to know what they’d say if they knew what she’d gotten up to last night. Thankfully, she wouldn’t be telling them that any time soon.

“Good morning,” she said, her voice falsely bright.

“Oh, not swallowing your food whole to avoid us today, then?” Ron said, raising his eyebrow. Harry seemed to be studying her carefully, but he remained silent.

“No,” she said primly. “I have decided to clue you in.”

“Lucky us,” Ron said darkly, narrowing his eyes.

“The gift basket I got was from my—my—ex-boyfriend,” she said. The word stung on her tongue. She hated thinking of Stuart in the past tense, hated thinking that he would never again run his fingers through her curly hair or rub the small of her back when he was kissing her.

She needed to re-focus.

Ron’s eyes were wide, and Harry looked totally unsurprised. “Well, I’d guessed that much,” Harry said, speaking to her for the first time that day.

“I hadn’t!” Ron said. His ears were red.

“Well, I met a boy this summer. Well, actually, I’d known him since I was a kid. We just sort of reconnected this summer, and it just happened, and now it’s over.” She said all of this in quite a rush, wanting to end this conversation as soon as possible.

“Why didn’t you tell us?” Ron said, openly scowling.

“It just didn’t come up correctly in any of our letters. I didn’t know how serious it would get. I didn’t… I mean, I didn’t mean to keep it from you two. It just happened.” Hermione shrugged slightly and looked down at her plate as though her eggs would provide some kind of protection from the horrid look on Ron’s face.

“I guess this is why you didn’t come to the Burrow this summer, then?” Harry asked her. His voice was accusatory and low, and she felt her stomach flip again. She knew Ron would be mad, but she was hoping Harry would be able to look past her lie.

“Er, yes, this was definitely part of the reason,” she said, not meeting either of their eyes.

“Did you even go to France?” Ron asked suddenly.

She thought about lying. She really did. Unbidden, a thought popped into her head: _Malfoy would lie._ Why did she care what Malfoy would do? Why was she even thinking about him at a time like this?

“No, we didn’t go to France,” she said finally, deciding she wasn’t going to do whatever it was sodding Malfoy would do in this situation.

Harry rolled his eyes, and Ron’s ears turned redder still. “Well, I’m so glad that some guy you met was more important than being there for your friend when he needed you this summer, Hermione,” Ron said angrily, looking pointedly at Harry.

“I know, but—,” Hermione said, but Ron cut her off.

“No buts. You did a shitty thing, and you need to own up to it,” Ron said. His cheeks were now red enough to match his ears.

Hermione felt a familiar stinging behind her eyes but told herself she would not be crying. Not here in the Great Hall, and not in front of or because of Ron Weasley. “I didn’t say I didn’t do a shitty thing, but I just felt…I don’t know, I felt happy, okay?”

“And you wouldn’t have been happy with Harry and me?” Ron shot back.

“Look, things here have just been…rather bleak the last couple of years. It was so nice not to feel like Harry Potter’s sidekick. I just felt like a normal teenage girl falling in love.”

Ron gaped at her. “In love?” he asked, his voice changing from angry to slightly hurt.

She didn’t know what to say. She just looked at him.

Harry, who had been watching this exchange wordlessly, as he did a lot of the times Ron and Hermione bickered, said, “I’m so sorry that things have been too bleak for you to handle. Must have been a real inconvenience.”

With that, he stood up and grabbed his bag and walked out of the Great Hall. Ron glared at Hermione and followed after him quickly.

All day, Hermione felt sick with guilt. She could only remember once before that Harry and Ron had both been angry at her at the same time: the time she turned Harry in for receiving a Firebolt. Then, though, she was sure they’d at least had thoughts like, “Hermione means well, but she shouldn’t have meddled in this.” Now, she knew, there was no redeeming quality for them to see. They were fully mad at her. She knew it would go away with time, but she didn’t want to think about how miserable she’d be until it did.

In classes that day, Hermione sat alone, away from the boys. It felt like she was missing limbs. She was so used to having them by her side that she even missed some of the more annoying things about them: Ron looking pointedly at her work to copy her, Harry tapping his foot under the desk.

Oddly, the only thing that made her feel at all hopeful that day was the prospect of detention that night. She knew that was definitely not how detention was supposed to work, but, she thought wryly, maybe she could take some of her frustrations out on Malfoy. She had to fight not to smirk, but then her smile faltered slightly, remembering that his moods were mercurial and ever-changing. He could, and quite possibly would, show up to detention tonight acting like nothing happened between them, and Hermione knew she needed to prepare herself for that kind of disappointment.

 _Purely physical disappointment,_ she reminded herself sternly. Her feelings, after all, would not be hurt by someone like Malfoy. Her body would just be disappointed that the electricity hadn’t happened again.

Again, who was she trying to convince here?

This preoccupation carried her though the afternoon and into the evening. She got a bit of homework done, which was a relief. Perhaps she wouldn’t have to spend all weekend bent over a piece of parchment and surrounded by books. As much as she loved school, she really would like to get outside a bit. The weather would turn cold soon, she thought as she tidied up her study materials before detention, and she wanted to enjoy the last bit of warmth September had to offer.

With a pang, she remembered a conversation she and Stuart had had about a month earlier.

“September is my favorite month,” he’d said.

“Really?” she asked. “Why?”

“The weather, of course. The most beautiful weather. It’s like everything is on the brink of changing.”

She smiled. “My birthday is in September,” she said.

“I know that, Hermione,” he said with a smirk. “I’ve known you since we were kids.” He paused briefly. “Though I’m not at all surprised you were born in my favorite month.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because I’m crazy about you, of course.”

She took a deep breath in her dorm room and looked in the mirror, tucking a stray strand of hair behind her ear before she walked into the hallway and out into the common room.

There he was. All fears of him deciding to meet her at the broom cupboard they’d be organizing tonight, near the Astronomy Tower, evaporated. Maybe, then, he wasn’t going to act weird about what had happened between them.

“Hello, Malfoy,” she said, trying her best to keep her voice cool.

“Granger,” he said, nodding curtly.

He stood up and walked over to the portrait hole, careful not to look back at her. Her heart raced momentarily, realizing they were exactly where they’d been less than twenty-four hours previously with their lips pressed together, but then they were gone. He did not pause. He opened the portrait hole and walked out, waiting for her in the hallway. When she stepped through, she felt as though she’d just run a mile. She felt breathless.

“All right, Granger?” he asked. She sensed a smirk in his voice, but she didn’t dare look over at him, not while she was so affected. She knew he was probably aware of what had affected her so. He wasn’t unintelligent, after all. In fact, she knew, he was very intelligent. That was something she found attractive about him.

 _Attractive?_ she asked herself. _Come on, Hermione, he’s a pretty face. Let’s not start thinking good things about his brain too. Physical, purely physical._

“Fine, fine,” she said casually, still not meeting his eye.

“Look,” he said, grabbing her arm to stop her suddenly. Her eyes flashed to his hand on her arm, and he released it. She felt that tingling of electricity where he’d touched her, and he hadn’t even touched her skin. His hand had been over the long sleeve of her jacket. What would it feel like, she wondered with burning curiosity, if his skin met hers again?

“Last night,” Malfoy continued, “I think we both just got a bit…carried away.”

He seemed unnerved, she noticed. He was running his hands through his pale hair again, something he seemed to do when he was stressed out.

“Yes, carried away,” she said absently, nodding, watching the way his fingers slid through the blonde strands of hair, remembering how his hands had felt in her hair last night.

“It doesn’t,” he looked around. “It doesn’t need to mean anything. I don’t want you to think…” He trailed off, clearly unsure as to how he was supposed to word what he was trying to say.

“You don’t want a Mudblood like me to think that someone like you could actually be interested in me, right?” she asked. Her face had gone cold.

“No, Granger, that’s not—,” he said.

“Save it,” she said. She couldn’t explain where her sudden outburst of anger had come from, but it had erupted full force.

She looked up at him then, and she saw his face looked conflicted, torn. The dark circles were more pronounced than ever. They seemed to be getting worse with every day. What would he look like by the end of the year if this is how he looked only a couple of weeks in? She tried not to feel curious, not to wonder.

“That isn’t what I was saying,” he said forcefully, meeting her eyes. She realized he wanted her to hear him out. She had dismissed him, essentially told him to shut up, and he was still explaining himself.

“Then what are you saying?” she said. She’d meant for her voice to come off as forceful as his, strong, but instead it was nearly a whisper. She felt herself leaning close to him, as though he might whisper his answer back at her.

“It was a mistake, but not for the reason you’re thinking,” he said.

“Then why was it a mistake?”

“Because, Granger, I can’t get involved with you. With anyone, really. I can’t drag people in on…on my life.” He clearly wanted to say more, and it was equally as clear that he couldn’t. He ran his hand over his left forearm, something he’d probably hoped Hermione would miss. She didn’t miss things like that. She hardly missed anything.

She looked around the deserted hallway just as he had done earlier, ascertaining that they were, in fact, alone. When she was satisfied, she stalked toward him. His eyes widened, and he backed up until he was against the wall, just what she’d wanted in the first place. She placed her hands on either side of his face, and, before she could think herself out of it, she kissed him just as fiercely as he’d kissed her the night before. Starting at her lips and spreading to her whole body, a tingling erupted, a fire within her. She was alive. She was burning with how alive she was. She was burning for him.

What’s more, he obviously felt it too. He was kissing her back, showing no signs of pulling away or pushing her away or of not wanting this as much as she did. They were both inexplicably drawn together.

His hands had wound their way through her hair again. She realized he must like her hair, despite years of teasing her about its volume. He was certainly prone to touching it, she thought. She smiled against his lips, and he must have felt it because she felt him smile back.

“What are you smiling about?” he said, pulling his lips a fraction of an inch away from hers.

“Oh,” she said, planting a small kiss on his pale neck. “Nothing,” another kiss, “Much.” Another one.

He groaned again, that same primal sound he’d made the night before, and she found herself just as affected as she had been last night. The pit of her stomach clenched, and she realized with a jolt that she _wanted_ him. She didn’t just want to feel the electricity of his kiss. She really wanted him. Her eyes fluttered open in shock.

“What is it?” he asked, looking down at her somewhat breathlessly. He moved his hands from her hair to the small of her back, his arms wrapped around her somewhat protectively.

Was he afraid she was going to walk away? She didn’t think she could, so he needn’t be afraid.

“Nothing,” she said, but her cheeks had turned furiously red, giving her away.

“Doesn’t seem like nothing,” he said with a smirk. He leaned down and took her earlobe in his teeth, sucking slightly on it. Her breath hitched, and he smirked again. “Mm, definitely not nothing, Granger,” he said.

She leaned her head against his chest, taking a few breaths before saying, “We need to get to the Astronomy Tower, or McGonagall is going to have us hunted down and killed.” She stepped out of his embrace and immediately felt cold without his arms around her. What was happening to her?

“All right,” he said with a loud exhale.

She started walking a pace or two ahead of him but chanced one glance back at him. He was staring unabashedly at her, and when he saw her look back, his smirk was more pronounced than ever. She rolled her eyes.

“Keep your sass in check, Granger,” he said to her. They were nearing the Astronomy Tower.

“Impossible,” she said with a smile, though he couldn’t see it since she was refusing give him the satisfaction of having her turn around again.

When they reached the broom cupboard, he went in first, and she found herself nervous to enter behind him. What did she think was going to happen? He wasn’t going to attack her or something. She was being foolish.

She took a breath and went inside after him, looking around at the cupboard’s contents. Very large telescopes and planetary models covered most of the space in the cupboard. She groaned. These were going to be lots of work to carry.

“I’ll do most of it,” Draco said suddenly. “This isn’t exactly as easy as Potions phials.”

She was surprised at his offer. “No,” she agreed. “But I do think we should probably clean some of this stuff off. These telescopes are so dusty. I doubt you’d even be able to see out of them.”

“Fine, you can handle that bit,” he said.

They worked in silence for a bit, but Hermione could have sworn her heartbeat was loud enough that he could hear it. She tried to listen for his and knew that either meant he was not as affected as she was or that he couldn’t hear her heartbeat either because— _Be logical, Hermione,_ she thought—you can’t hear heartbeats from across a room.

When the cupboard was almost empty, Malfoy took a break, leaning against a shelf and wiping his sleeve across his forehead. Hermione was well aware that they were once again standing close. She had finished taking the lighter stuff out and had been leaning against the shelf herself when he’d come to join her.

His back was to her. She admired the broad planes of his shoulders, thinking that for someone who’d been such a scrawny kid, he’d turned out to be quite fit. He was wearing a white oxford, as always, and she noticed appreciatively how the fabric had to stretch over his shoulders. She remembered suddenly that she had been in his arms an hour before. Hermione Granger, in the arms of Draco Malfoy. What was the world coming to?

She sighed, and then her eyes widened at the sound. She hadn’t meant for that to be aloud.

He turned to face her, and everything about him was devastating, from his full lips to his perfectly angled nose to those gray eyes, usually so cold, but just now very much alive, almost dancing. “What’s wrong?” he asked, his voice low. He had taken an almost imperceptible step closer to her. She didn’t miss things like that, though. She didn’t miss much at all.

“Nothing,” he said, her voice reduced to a whisper again.

“Granger,” he said, a slight growl to her voice. She felt the same clenching in her stomach that she did when he’d groaned while kissing her.

“What?” she asked. She wished desperately that she could raise the volume of her voice a little higher, but she seemed completely unable.

Without saying anything else, Malfoy suddenly closed the space between them and picked her up, slamming her against the shelves behind her. Instinctively, she wrapped her legs around his waist, not even hesitating, and their mouths were connected again. This time was different, though. Less hesitant, more frantic. Their bodies were pressed together, and she could feel him pressing into her torso. Bizarrely, she found herself blushing even when they were kissing at the thought of Malfoy being aroused by her.

She didn’t know she was going to do it, but she took her right arm from around his neck, leaving only her left arm draped there, and ran it down his torso, their mouths still locked together, tongues now moving together. She heard and felt his groan this time, the vibration tickling the inside of her mouth, and she continued to move her hand lower, past the waistband of his trousers, and onto his dick, feeling the hardness above the cloth of his trousers. The groan was more pronounced then.

“Granger,” he said warningly.

“What?” she sighed into his mouth. She ran one finger on the fabric above his dick, unable to stop the smirk from appearing on her face when she felt him twitch beneath her touch.

He growled hungrily and pushed her harder against the shelves. He kissed her for a few more seconds, and then he suddenly put her down. She didn’t even have time to catch her breath before he’d taken out his wand, shut the door, and waved it once more, a pile of blankets and pillows appearing on the floor.

Hermione’s eyes widened. Was she going to do this? The only person she’d ever slept with before, unsurprisingly, had been Stuart, and it had only happened a few times, late in the summer, when she had been the most in love with him. She thought achingly of the tenderness with which he’d handled her.

She had a feeling Malfoy wouldn’t be so tender.

She didn’t think she wanted him to be.

 


	7. For the First Time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There be smut ahead.

Hermione’s heartbeat seemed to have invaded her head as she looked at the blankets and pillows on the floor of the broom cupboard. After he’d conjured those, Malfoy had magically created the same blue jar of flames that Hermione had used countless times and duplicated it, setting a few up around the cupboard. The dim blue light made his gray eyes look even more alight, and he was stalking toward her like an animal to his prey.

She gulped but found she wasn’t scared. She was excited.

When he reached her, he slid one arm around her waist and pulled her into him, placing the other, of course, in her hair, tugging at it insistently as he kissed her. Instead of feeling frantic, this time the kiss felt slow, deliberate. He knew what he was doing and who he was doing it with, and he didn’t care. He wanted her, she knew, and he was going to let himself have her, no matter how wrong it was on so many levels.

“Malfoy,” she whispered against his lips.

He pulled away quickly and looked down at her. He was so much taller than her, she realized. Her head barely reached his chest.

“What is it, Granger?” he asked. His eyes looked hungry, and he looked worried that she wasn’t going to satiate him, that she’d thought better of the idea. He paused, seeming to try to come to his senses. “We don’t have to…” he started.

“I want to,” she cut him off. She realized her voice sounded as hungry as his eyes looked. The sound of her own voice flipped her stomach over. No one had ever had this effect on her before.

He crashed into her again, backing her once again into the shelf. Instead of putting his hands in her hair, he reached them up her shirt, first touching her stomach somewhat tentatively, and then moving up and up, under her bra, until finally—she gasped—he was rubbing her nipples in deliberate circles, occasionally flicking and pinching them. She felt nearly embarrassed by the sounds that were coming out of her mouth, but she couldn’t help moaning. His long fingers felt exquisite. She already found herself wondering how they’d feel in other places.

She reached out and tugged upwards on his oxford, untucking it. She looked up at him, a glint in her eye, as she started to unbutton it slowly.

“To hell with it, Granger,” he said, and he reached down and ripped the shirt off. Her eyes were wide, and he said, “I only have about a hundred of those bloody things.”

She smirked and then looked down at him. His chest was toned, as were his abs. She couldn’t help but stare. She wanted to see all of him. She started to pull the shirt off of his right arm, sliding her fingers slowly down his skin. She felt chill bumps erupt where her fingers trailed, and she smiled victoriously. His shirt was only hanging on by one sleeve now.

She went to go pull it off of his left arm, and he suddenly froze.

“No,” he said plainly.

“No?” she asked him, raising an eyebrow. “I want to see you.”

“I—you can’t,” he said.

Hermione’s eyes flicked between his gray ones and his left arm a couple of times, and then her eyes went wide. His eyes narrowed, seeming to understand the conclusion she’d drawn, and they appraised each other for a few moments.

“Yes I can,” she said finally. “I can.”

“Granger, you can’t possibly know what…”

“I do know, Malfoy.”

His eyes widened. He clearly didn’t think she knew as much as she did about Death Eaters.

“You know what—what it means?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“And—and you still want to…?”

She took a deep breath, listening to her body. “Yes,” she said resolutely. When he stared at her in undisguised shock, she continued, “Look, Malfoy, this isn’t going to be some romance, some great love. There is something between us—physically—and we don’t have to agree on things or be on the same side in order to satisfy these…these…” She huffed, frustrated with her inability to choose the right word.

“Cravings,” he said, his voice low, his eyes back to their hungry state.

“Yes,” she said weakly. “Cravings.”

He stared at her a few moments longer before glancing down at his own arm, the sleeve of his shirt still hanging there limply, and pulling it off. It probably only took him a second or two to pull it off, but Hermione felt as though she was stuck in that moment forever. When it came off, she tried to keep her face neutral but could not control her erratic breathing upon seeing the Mark.

It was heinous and ugly and black and…and…it didn’t belong on him. His pale skin was perfect, unblemished, but for this one monstrosity. She wanted to whip her want out, to remove it, but she knew it would never fade. It was not any normal Muggle tattoo. It was magic. It was forever.

She let that sink in. He would always be marked. Even if he someday came to his senses, she knew, he would always be othered.

She stuck her hand out in the space between them, and he almost made to move away, but she grabbed his left wrist. Using her free hand, she ran her index finger from his pulse point up his forearm. When she reached the outline of the Mark, she could feel that it was slightly raised.

“Is it new?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said, his voice barely a whisper. “This summer.”

She nodded. “I thought so.”

He didn’t say anything.

“Because your father is in Azkaban, then?” she asked, looking up at him. She would not be afraid to meet his eye. He was sixteen years old. There had to be a reason this was happening, and knowing Lord Voldemort, it was only revenge. He was not of age. There should be no reason for Voldemort to want such a young, unqualified servant.

“That’s why he asked, I think,” Malfoy said. “And…” He cut himself off.

“And what?”

“Nothing, Granger,” he said.

He had moved away a couple of inches. She stepped closer again.

“Look, I already know. You’ve trusted me with this information,” she said, trying to reason with him.

“I didn’t trust you with it. You’d already figured it out.”

“You could have lied. You could have cursed me. You chose not to.” She paused. “You’re not an evil person. You’re a foul git, you’re a bully even, but you’re not an inherently evil person.”

For a moment, she thought she saw something like relief in his face, like he’d needed the reassurance that he was not, in fact, someone with a totally black soul, but then his face changed back to the normal cool mask, the one that didn’t let anything real show through.

“You don’t know anything about me, Granger. You have no idea what I’ve done.”

“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do,” she said. She reached her hand out and placed it on his heart. She felt, once again, the thudding inside his chest. She felt how warm his skin was. This was not a Death Eater. Not really.

Without saying anything else, she closed the space between them that he had been widening. She wrapped her arms around his neck, winding her hands into his long blonde hair, and kissed him. First, on his collarbone, and then she worked her way up, leaving a trail on his neck, until finally she was at his lips. When she reached them, she paused, waiting to see what he would do. She heard his sharp intake of breath, and then he crashed their lips together, kissing her, kissing her, kissing her.

This time, she was the one to push him backwards, toward the pile of blankets and pillows. When they’d reached them, he reached down and pulled her shirt easily over her head, and then he reached around and unclasped her bra. It fell away, and he growled appreciatively, taking her breasts in his hands, cupping them easily. She tilted her head backward, reveling in the pleasure of his hands on her bare skin, and reached down to unbutton her own trousers. The movement hadn’t gone unmissed by him, and he suddenly moved his right hand from her breast and did the same. He tugged, and his trousers came down. He kicked them off, leaving him standing in a pair of tight black briefs.

 _My god,_ she thought. _He may have some fucked up thoughts and be a fucked up person, but there is nothing fucked up about that body._

Without even realizing she was doing it, she was pulling off her trousers at the mere sight of him. He was smirking, and she was too, and it struck her that probably neither one of them was even capable of stopping at this point.

She slid her underwear down her legs, thanking Merlin she had shaved the night before. She watched him watch her, the sight of him becoming more and more aroused arousing her in turn. Once she’d pulled her underwear off, she stepped forward, feeling bolder and more comfortable than she’d ever imagined she could feel in this type of situation, especially with this person. He was standing stock still, waiting to see what she would do. She reached out and snapped the band of his briefs. She liked the _pop_ sound it made. She smirked again and slid one finger back underneath the band of the briefs and pulled them down.

She’d known from touching it above his trousers that his dick was sizeable, but her eyes widened slightly when she saw it. As soon as she saw it, she could hardly wait to have it—in her hand, in her mouth, inside of her.

She took his hand and pulled him down to the blankets with her. He leaned forward and kissed her tentatively on her neck. Once he had ascertained that she really was okay with what was going on, he kissed her neck more feverishly, sucking and biting at her skin.

“Mmm,” she said, unable to keep the appreciative sound from falling out of her mouth.

His hands were roaming her body. At first, he continued playing with her nipples, but after a few moments of this, he seemed unable to resist letting his hand travel further down her body until finally, finally, _finally,_ his fingers glided over her clit, and she gasped. He began rubbing soft circles, and she immediately became even wetter than she had already been, something she didn’t think was possible. At the sound of her gasp, his hard dick nudged insistently at her torso. She wanted him inside her so badly, but she didn’t want to rush this. She wanted to savor it.

He laid her back so her back was flat on the ground. With his right hand, he continued to rub her clit. With her left hand, he took two fingers and slowly slid them inside of her. She bucked her hips slightly, unable to help herself, and he pressed her back down, watching her intently as he continued to torture her with his hands. His eyes raked over her body, the way she was writhing for him, and he slowly lowered his head, kissing her stomach. She knew what must be coming, and she clenched in anticipation, but he was torturously slow about it, still rubbing and flicking her clit, still sliding his fingers in and out of her.

Slowly but surely, he worked his way down, licking a trail from her belly button to her clit. When his tongue finally made contact with her clit, she bucked furiously, and as though he had known that would happen, his head rose gracefully with her hips. She desperately grabbed at his hair, wrapping handfuls of it into her small fists, and he groaned in response. _So he liked having his hair pulled, did he?_ she thought somewhere in the back of her mind as her body began to convulse with her first orgasm as his tongue continued to work at her clit and his fingers continued to slide effortlessly in and out. She was so wet that there was no resistance whatsoever.

After she came, she frantically reached down. He lowered his body on top of her, and she took his dick in her hands, marveling at the size of it, and began to pump up and down. He was hovering above her, and she saw him close his eyes and bite his lip. With her free left hand, she moved her fingers once again to his hair and tugged. He groaned, and she smirked.

After a few moments of this, neither of them could wait any longer. She used her hand to guide his dick to her entrance, and he pushed inside tauntingly slow. She pushed her hips up to meet his, closing the space between them, and they both moaned loudly as they finally came together. It felt like they’d been waiting for this for years, since the first time he’d called her a Mudblood, since the time she had punched him in the face.

They began rocking together almost angrily, almost viciously. Hermione was scratching wildly at his back, and he seemed to enjoy the stinging pain that had to be erupting on his skin. He was fucking her hard, with no forgiveness. She remembered suddenly that he had been about to use Crucio on her the day that they dueled in the hallway. Did he want to cause her pain? If so, he was way off mark here. He was bringing her nothing but pleasure, she thought, as another orgasm rocked through her.

Suddenly, Hermione flipped him over, and his eyes widened as she began riding him. She reached down and grabbed his hair, using it as her anchor, and ground her hips against him.

“Fuck,” he said, and she knew he was close. “Fuck, Granger.”

Her breathing sped up, hearing him say her name like that, with his eyes closed, with his teeth ground together, and all because she felt so good on him.

She rode him harder, faster, and he was responding by matching her rhythm, by grabbing her arse and holding it tight, pumping into her erratically. She knew he was about to come, and fuck, it was a beautiful sight to see: Draco Malfoy on the brink.

He dug his nails into the soft skin of her arse and let out a deep primal groan, and she let herself come for the third time so that they would come together.

After their orgasms had ridden their way through their bodies, she collapsed onto his chest, feeling the sweat on her forehead mixing with the sweat on his chest, and closed her eyes, breathing deeply and quickly.

His heart, she heard, was thundering away. It was nearly defeaning.

She opened her eyes and looked over to where his left arm was sprawled on the ground beside him, and her eyes widened, though he couldn't see them of course. She'd just fucked a Death Eater, she realized.

She'd just fucked a Death Eater and bloody loved it.


	8. Postponement

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay in updating! I was sick all last week and had some crazy personal stuff going on. Hope you all enjoy this one! xx

For the next week, Hermione felt heavy with the secret she was carrying around. She and Malfoy had decided that night not to say anything to anyone for obvious reasons—like that even needed to be said—and they’d also decided they could carry on a purely physical relationship without getting emotionally attached because, well, there was no denying that they had a great physical connection.

And over that week, they had definitely started exploring that physical relationship, having similar trysts nearly every night they found themselves in a new broom cupboard. As a result, they weren’t getting back to their dorms until quite late since, of course, they still had to do the actual work of organizing and inventorying the broom cupboards.

On Wednesday the third week of their detentions, Hermione found herself nearly dozing off in History of Magic. Although Harry and Ron had still been quite stiff to her about Stuart, they seemed unable to resist this situation.

“Oy, Hermione,” Ron whispered, nudging her side. Despite the fact that they had been mad at her, Hermione had resumed sitting with them in classes figuring that they would be more likely to get over things quickly if she just acted like everything was normal.

She jolted awake, her eyes wide. “Wh—what? did I miss something?”

“No, I think he’s just wondering what _you’re_ doing falling asleep in class,” Harry chimed in in a whisper next to her.

She shifted her eyes, not wanting to look at them when she told them yet another lie. “Oh, I’ve just been having trouble sleeping, you know, having to stay up late to get homework done after detention and all that.”

“Bloody hell, I forgot you’re still in detention with that git,” Ron said. “I almost feel sorry for you.”

Hermione rolled her eyes, but her stomach was doing somersaults. She didn’t want to discuss Malfoy with Harry and Ron, especially not now that they seemed to be on the brink of getting over her lie about Stuart. “I wish I could forget,” she said. That sounded casual enough. That was good.

“I still can’t believe you dueled him in the hallway,” Harry whispered. He sounded semi-annoyed, semi-filled with awe.

“What’s gotten into you?” Ron whispered suddenly, his eyes narrowed in deep thought.

“What are you on about?” Hermione asked.

“Dueling Malfoy in the hallway. Falling asleep in class. You’re not yourself.”

Hermione looked down at her hands folded on her desk. She tried for a moment to catch back on to what Professor Binns was saying, but she knew it was a lost cause. She would just review it in the textbook later, take her own notes. That should be sufficient. “I suppose I’ve just been having a tough time,” she said quietly, deciding to take the sympathy route, even though it made her sick to think about manipulating her friends this way.

As expected, Harry and Ron both exchanged guilty glances. “Look, Hermione, maybe we’ve been too hard on you about your, er, ex-boyfriend and all,” Harry said, always the diplomat.

“Maybe so,” Ron said begrudgingly. When Harry saw he didn’t look fully convinced, he eyed him threateningly, and Ron added, “All right, probably so.” Harry seemed appeased.

“Does this mean you’re going to stop ignoring me then?” Hermione asked, looking through her lashes at Harry.

The two boys sighed simultaneously. “I guess so,” they said at the same time and then laughed.

“We’ve known each other far too long,” Ron said with a laugh.

Hermione felt full and warm at the thought that she had her two best friends back on her side, but there was something nagging at the back of her brain telling her that if they knew what she’d been up to for the last week—and _especially_ who it’d been with—they wouldn’t be on her side at all. 

* * *

At the end of their Transfiguration lesson the following Monday, Professor McGonagall said, “Miss Granger, can you come see me after class, please?”

As Hermione walked up the aisle of the classroom to McGonagall’s desk, a million thoughts were running through her head. Had McGonagall somehow found out what she and Malfoy had been up to? Her cheeks reddened at the thought. What would she think of Hermione? Would she tell any of the other professors? Did the entire staff already know that Hermione was some kind of—what was the phrase Ron said his mum used?—scarlet woman?

“Yes, Professor?” Hermione asked, her voice slightly higher than normal.

“I just needed to let you know that your last week of detentions with Mr. Malfoy will be postponed until next week. You two will have this week off.”

Hermione scrunched her eyebrows together. “Oh, all right.” She paused, wondering if she dared go on. “But, er, why, Professor?”

Professor McGonagall was looking down at a stack of essays and carefully kept her eyes trained on them, not meeting Hermione’s. “Mr. Malfoy is ill this week,” she said simply.

“Oh!” Hermione said, feeling even more confused. Malfoy had seemed perfectly fine the night before, if not even a little better than fine. She remembered the way he’d bitten her neck, sending goosebumps down her body, and the way he’d growled when he came inside of her. He certainly didn’t seem ill.

“Yes, so detentions will resume next Monday, and you can finish your final week. That will be all.”

Recognizing her dismissal, Hermione turned around and left. She felt ashamed at the hot, disappointed feeling in her belly. She knew she ought to be happy: she had a week to catch up on homework and sleep, and Malfoy was supposed to be the bane of her existence. She realized, though, that that just wasn’t true anymore. He may still have been the same arrogant git he’d always been, but he also lit her up from the inside and made her feel alive in a way no one else possibly could just then, or maybe even ever.

And was he still the same arrogant git, she found herself wondering as she walked into the prefects’ common room. She took a seat in her favorite armchair, the one across from the one Malfoy always waited for her in before detentions, and took out her Arithmancy homework, planning on making some real headway.

When she tried to figure out if he was in fact the same arrogant git she’d known and hated for years, all she could picture were the dark circles underneath his gray eyes and the tortured look on his face the first time she’d seen his Mark. Then she thought about how he looked with his head between her legs, the way he got off on pleasuring her. Where was the selfish Malfoy that had tormented her for years? Sure, he still had plenty of snide remarks, and he was never going to be what someone would consider a warm and joyful person, but this Malfoy was different. This Malfoy was better.

She looked at her watch, startled to find it was almost time for dinner, and she hadn’t even touched her essay. She sighed loudly and put her things back in her bag, resolving to finish the essay after dinner. She quickly put her bag in her dorm and headed toward dinner.

When she got to the Great Hall, she immediately spotted Harry and Ron and went to sit down next to Harry and across from Ron. Once again, she felt relieved that things were back to normal between the three of them.

“Anyway, I’ve been thinking of tailing him,” Harry was saying to Ron just as she sat down.

“Tailing who?” Hermione said with a sigh and an eye roll.

“He’s on about Malfoy again,” Ron said, shaking his head.

“You two can act like I’m crazy all you want,” Harry said, staring resolutely back and forth between his two best friends. “But I know he’s up to something. Hermione, maybe you can try to figure something out during your detentions?”

Hermione’s stomach was flipping over and over insanely quickly. Her appetite seemed to have disappeared. Sure, she could find things out for him, like that Malfoy had a Dark Mark, like that he was fucking Hermione herself. Trying to keep her voice level, she said, “Well, our last week of detentions has actually been postponed for a week.”

“Why?” Harry asked quickly, hardly letting her get the last word out before his question erupted from his mouth.

“McGonagall says Malfoy is ill,” Hermione said with a shrug.

She saw Harry glancing over her shoulder and knew he must be scanning the Slytherin table. Sure enough, he said, “He’s not here. That’s odd.”

“Well if he’s ill, of course he isn’t here. Maybe he’s in the hospital wing?” Hermione suggested, not sure where else Malfoy would be if he was ill enough to miss a week of detentions.

“Harry, I still think you’re barking,” Ron interjected. “What would You-Know-Who want with a sixteen-year-old git like Malfoy?”

 _Oh Ron,_ Hermione couldn’t help but think. _I wish you were right. I so wish you were right._

“I think I’ll check the hospital wing,” Harry said, reaching to pull the Marauder’s Map out of his bag. He glanced around before opening it under the table and quietly whispering, “I solemnly swear I am up to no good.”

The map bloomed on the page, and Hermione watched transfixed, still impressed at the magic James and his friends had performed to create such an artefact. She began scanning the map quickly, and she saw immediately that Malfoy was not in the hospital wing. She frowned. He wasn’t in the dungeons either. In fact, they couldn’t find him anywhere.

“Maybe he’s in the Room of Requirement?” Harry asked, clearly stumped as to where else he could have disappeared to.

“Maybe…” Hermione said. She now found that her curiosity was peaked as well, though obviously for very different reasons than Harry’s was. She already knew he was a Death Eater after all. She also knew, though, that he didn’t really want to be one, and that’s how she justified withholding this information from Harry, who she knew would fly off the handle if he found out. But why had he disappeared from school all of a sudden when things had been perfectly fine the night before?

“Maybe we should head up there and stand guard outside the door in my cloak and see if he ever comes out?” Harry said.

Ron rolled his eyes and said, “Come off it, Harry, I’m not spending my free time lurking about figuring out what Malfoy is up to.”

“Let’s go, Harry,” Hermione said, a steely glint in her warm brown eyes.

“Really?” Harry and Ron said simultaneously.

“Yes,” she said, thinking fast. “I think you might be right. He may be up to something. We should figure it out.”

“That’s settled then,” Harry said, a mischievous smile spreading across his face just like it always did when they were up to something or were playing out some crazy plan. “Let’s go, Hermione. Ron, we’ll catch up with you later.”

Ron looked distinctly grumpy but still said he wasn’t going to skulk about after Malfoy, so Harry and Hermione promptly left the Hall together. Hermione hadn’t eaten a single bite, and she had maybe never felt less hungry.

Once they were out of the Hall, Harry reached into his bag and pulled out his invisibility cloak.

Hermione raised her eyebrows. “I figured we would have to go to Gryffindor Tower to get that.”

“Dumbledore has asked me to carry it around at all times,” Harry said with a shrug. Hermione tried to process why that would be. Harry didn’t seem to think it was that odd of a request, but Hermione couldn’t help but think that might mean Hogwarts wasn’t as safe as it once was. Otherwise, why would Harry have any reason to hide inside the castle?

They donned the cloak and made their way up to the seventh floor and to the blank stretch of wall that they knew concealed the Room of Requirement.

“If he’s in there, we won’t be able to get in,” Hermione said. “So maybe we should try that before we stand here and wait for hours.”

“Right,” Harry said with a nod. He stepped out from underneath the cloak and walked back and forth in front of the door three times.

A door appeared.

“But he’s not there then!” Harry said, frustrated.

“Let’s have a look inside,” Hermione suggested. “Maybe he didn’t properly protect the room so that intruders couldn’t get in.”

“Surely he’s not that thick,” Harry said, but he stepped forward and pulled the door’s handle anyway.

They walked inside to find a room that looked very similar to the Gryffindor common room with its roaring fires and comfortable armchairs. Hermione felt immediately warm and at home, but she also knew what this meant.

“He would never be here,” she said simply.

Harry shook his head. “No, this room is all my own,” he said with a hint of fondness. Refocusing, he said, “Then why isn’t he at school? Has he been taken home? Maybe Voldemort needed to see him or something.” Harry’s eyes were darting about wildly as if searching for the right answers in this newly formed Gryffindor common room.

“That seems kind of unlikely,” Hermione reasoned with him. “Even if he is working for Voldemort, wouldn’t Voldemort want to keep that a secret so that no one at the school would suspect anything? It seems like pulling him out of school for a week would send up some red flags.”

“Maybe he really is ill,” Harry said with a sigh. “I never thought the idea of an ill Malfoy would be disappointing to me.”

“Me either,” Hermione said, and Harry had no idea just how true that was.


	9. Return

The week seemed to drag by, as Hermione was stupidly curious about why Malfoy was away from the school. She tried to downplay it around Ron, knowing it annoyed him when she and Harry “played detective,” as he liked to call it, but with Harry, at least, she could speculate a bit.

“Do you think he’s off getting the Mark?” Harry asked her that Friday.

Hermione carefully avoided his eye. “Maybe…” she said.

“That might make sense,” Harry said, not looking at Hermione. He stood up from the armchair he was sitting in in the Gryffindor common room and began pacing. Hermione had taken to sitting with him in Gryffindor Tower instead of hanging out in the prefects’ common room as much. She hated staring at Malfoy’s favorite chair and wondering even more relentlessly what he was up to. Had Voldemort sent him on some kind of mission? What if he didn’t come back at all? What if he had been killed? Hermione found herself feeling sick at the thought, and then she shook her head, trying to rid herself of the thought and of the feelings for Malfoy that were utterly confusing.

“What?” Harry asked, looking at her curiously.

“Huh?” she asked, her eyes darting up to meet his fleetingly before she glanced at the fire to avoid looking at him again.

“Why did you shake your head?” He was looking at her as though she’d lost her marbles.

“Oh, I was just thinking about all the Ancient Runes homework I have to do,” she said, her cheeks burning. “I’ll be up all night, I’m sure of it.”

“Maybe you should get going,” Harry suggested kindly. Hermione knew he wanted to sit up and obsess about Malfoy’s whereabouts, but she also knew that he was sacrificing her company for the sake of her (very fake) homework concerns. She was reminded, as she often was, that Harry was a very good friend, and she felt guilty for lying to him: about Malfoy’s Mark, about her feelings for him (even if she couldn’t quite figure out what the feelings meant), and about the fact that she and Malfoy had shagged each other senseless multiple times.

“You’re probably right,” she said, standing up. Before she could stop herself, she darted across the plush carpeting to Harry and embraced him in a close hug.

“What the? Hermione?” he asked, patting her head awkwardly. She stepped away from him, her cheeks redder than ever. “What was that for?” he asked, eyebrows raised.

“You’re just a great friend, that’s all,” she said, shrugging, trying to tame the heat in her cheeks.

“Er, all right,” Harry said, scratching his hair.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said, quickly picking up her bag and leaving the common room, leaving Harry looking rather confused indeed.

Hermione tried—she really did—not to obsess about Malfoy all weekend long. She found that she was semi-disgusted with herself for caring so much about where some Death Eater git was all weekend as if she was….what? His girlfriend? She snorted inwardly at the thought. Malfoy would never be her boyfriend.

 _And you’d never be his girlfriend!_ her internal voice reminded her sternly.

Right. Right. She would never be his girlfriend. She didn’t have to be his girlfriend to enjoy shagging him, though, right? She could still fantasize about him inside of her, about her nails running down his back, about him moaning into her ear and biting her neck. Those things were still okay, right?

Sunday night, as she was falling asleep in her dorm, she sighed loudly. Malfoy should be back the next day, and she sincerely hoped so. They had business to attend to in some broom cupboard or another.

* * *

Monday morning, Hermione did not see Malfoy at breakfast, and her heart sank. She immediately inwardly scolded herself for caring at all, but she really thought he would be back today. After all, they were supposed to have detention again that night. She wouldn’t be surprised if McGonagall stopped her after Transfiguration later in the day to tell her that detention was being postponed yet again.

“What are you looking so put out about?” Ron asked, sitting down across from her. Harry sat down next to Ron.

“Oh, nothing,” Hermione said, sighing despite herself.

“You’re usually chipper on Monday mornings,” Harry said.

“Yeah,” Ron agreed. “You’re always freakishly happy about getting back to classes.

Hermione scowled. “Well, I’m a bit sleepy this morning, if you must know,” she said with a huff.

“Still not sleeping well?” Ron asked, his face showing a bit of sympathy. It looked foreign there.

“Not really,” Hermione said, not adding the real reason why she wasn’t sleeping. She would let the boys think it was because she was still heartbroken over Stuart. Truth be told, while she did still miss Stuart and care about him, her thoughts were becoming more and more occupied by someone who she knew would piss off her friends more than ever. She had to suppress a nervous gulp at the thought.

The boys exchanged uncomfortable glances and shifted in their seats, and Hermione decided to look at her plate of eggs and sausage instead of at them. She poked her fork nervously around it for a moment and then took a small bite. Once again, she found her appetite to be gone. Why was Malfoy able to have this effect on her? After all, it was just sex.

Still, she knew her body was missing him even if her mind wasn’t sure what was going on. She missed his touch, his kiss, every feeling she felt when she was near him. She nearly shuddered at the thought of his hands on her bare skin.

After a few more bites, Hermione said, “Well, I’m off to Ancient Runes. See you in Transfiguration later.” Before the boys could say anything else to her, she had slung her bag over her shoulder and made her way out of the Hall.

Her Ancient Runes class dragged by, and when she went to Transfiguration, she did her best to pay attention, taking notes but not really taking any information in. She knew she would have to review the textbook to make sure her notes were even accurate. She wished that the lesson that day had been more interactive, something that would have kept her hands and mind busy. Instead, she found her thoughts wandering and felt frustrated with herself.

At the end of the class, just as she had expected, McGonagall asked her to stay behind so she could talk to her. She sighed, gathered her bag, and walked up to the front of the class where the professor was waiting.

“Yes, Professor?” she asked politely.

“I wanted to remind you that your detentions will resume tonight,” McGonagall said.

“Without Malfoy?” Hermione blurted out.

McGonagall’s eyebrows raised. “Whatever do you mean?”

“Well, he isn’t back, Professor. I noticed at breakfast.”

McGonagall shook her head. “Mr. Malfoy returned after first period this morning.”

Hermione hated herself for the butterflies that erupted in her stomach from that simple sentence. She could have giggled. Professor McGonagall had no idea she had given her butterflies. She felt full again with her secret, but this time she felt mischievous for it. She felt excited by it. The guilt was gone now that Harry and Ron were out of sight. She felt almost powerful knowing that someone like Malfoy was sneaking around and shagging her in broom cupboards, that he couldn’t keep his hands off of her.

“Oh,” she said, trying not to smile so as not to tip off McGonagall. “Well, all right then. Malfoy and I will be there at 8 o’clock.”

“Very well, Miss Granger,” McGonagall said. She turned around and sat down at her desk, which Hermione knew was her cue to leave. She turned around and walked off, a stupid smirk plastered on her face, a smirk she knew she had picked up from too much time around Malfoy.

* * *

That night, Hermione took extra care putting on mascara and smoothing down her hair, though she typically didn’t care about either of those things. She even spritzed a little perfume on her collarbone before turning and heading out the door in her curve-hugging v-neck sweater and her favorite pair of jeans.

She stepped into the common room and realized she was holding her breath. When she saw him sitting in his usual chair, she exhaled and felt like she could sing. Her body was immediately aware of his presence, and she felt warm all over.

He stood up when he saw her and she realized something was wrong. He looked paler than usual. The dark circles were more pronounced. He had what appeared to be a scratch across his cheek, a blemish on his otherwise perfect skin, as unwelcome as his Mark.

“Malfoy?” she asked, trying not to sound as worried as she felt.

He nodded stiffly. “Granger.”

“Are you all right?” she asked. “I know you’ve been ill.”

He glanced around as if worried someone might hear even though the common room was deserted but for them. “I’m fine, thanks,” he said quickly. “Let’s get going.”

As they walked to the broom cupboard on the fourth floor that they would be working on that night, Hermione noticed that Malfoy was keeping more space between them than usual, walking nearly a foot away from her. She stared at the space between their arms, and every cell in her burned to reach her arm out and touch his. She refrained. She stared once again at the scratch on his cheek.

When they reached the broom cupboard, Malfoy immediately went in and got to work. He wasn’t messing around. He was trying to make quick work of this one.

“Whoa, slow down, why don’t you?” Hermione asked, trying to keep her tone light and playful.

Malfoy didn’t respond. He continued lifting various objects out and putting them in the hallway, just as they had grown accustomed to doing.

Hermione began to help him. They worked in silence for a while. Hermione’s brain was buzzing with questions, but she felt as though her mouth was glued shut. Why wasn’t Malfoy talking to her? What had happened to him last week? Was he okay?

Finally, when the cupboard was nearly empty and they were about to start inventorying the objects they’d removed, she got up the nerve to say, “Are you still ill?”

Malfoy looked at her as if surprised by the sound of her voice after working in silence for so long. “No, why?” he asked. He wasn’t meeting her eye.

“You’re just very quiet,” she said with a small shrug.

“I don’t feel like talking, Granger,” he said.

“Maybe talking isn’t really what I feel like doing either,” she said, edging toward him.

He looked down at his feet and stepped away, immediately busying himself again. He was avoiding her flirting carefully, she knew. She scrunched her eyebrows. What had she done to make him not want to sleep with her anymore? The last time she had seen him, they’d had a great shagging session. He didn’t seem to have any problems then.

Had something happened over the week he was gone to make him decide against their arrangement? Her stomach dropped at the thought.

She walked over to him and placed her hand on his arm gently. He flinched. She tried to ignore how badly that stung but removed her hand.

“Malfoy, what’s going on?” she asked softly.

He shook his head. “Nothing.”

“Where have you been?” she asked. “Were you…I mean, were you doing something for…for _him_?”

He looked down at his feet and shook his head again. She could have cried with relief. She had been sure he had been on some kind of dangerous mission for Voldemort.

“Well, why are you being so standoffish then?” she asked.

He sighed loudly. “I’m just trying to do my detention so this can be done,” he said harshly.

“The detentions, or this?” she said, gesturing between the two of them.

He met her gaze finally, staring straight into her eyes. “Both.”

She felt as though her heart had stopped, even though it was thudding loudly in her chest. “Where is all this coming from? Was it because you saw your parents or something while you were gone?” She ignored the tightness in her throat that always came when she felt rejected in any way.

“No, it has nothing to do with my parents,” Malfoy said, averting his eyes once again.

“Well then what the bloody hell is going on?” she asked, losing patience. “Things were fine. We had a good arrangement that seemed to be working fine for both of us. Then you go away for a week and you come back and suddenly it’s not fine anymore?” She paused. “Unless, of course, it wasn’t working fine for you in the first place?”

“No,” he said quickly, and she thought she saw a faint blush appear on his skin. It gave him a nice color. He looked so pale without it, especially since he’d returned from being sick.

“Then what is it? Spit it out, Malfoy,” she said, her voice icy.

“There are things you don’t know about, Hermione,” he said, his voice low.

She was startled—shocked, even—by his use of her first name. She tried not to give that away. “Then let me know,” she said, reaching her arm out again. This time, he didn’t flinch. She wrapped her fingers around his wrist.

“I can’t,” he said, looking down at her hand.

“Why?” she asked. “Does it have something to do with Voldemort?”

He flinched at her use of the name, but she didn’t apologize. “No, it really doesn’t.”

She felt so confused. Why wouldn’t he just tell her, if it didn’t have something to do with Voldemort? What was the great secret?

“Let me in,” she said, stepping closer to him.

As if he couldn’t resist, he leaned in toward her and placed his face in the crook of her neck, breathing in deeply. She felt chills erupt everywhere on her body from his proximity, from the way he literally seemed intoxicated by her.

“I can’t,” he repeated, his lips tickling the skin on her neck.

“Why?” she asked. She realized how breathless she sounded.

“You’ll…” he started, and then must have thought better of it because he didn’t continue.

“Malfoy,” she said seriously, pulling herself away from him so that she could look into his gray eyes. “I know you’re a Death Eater. I know you have the Mark, and I still haven’t run away from you. What could you tell me that’s worse?”

He looked down once again. She realized what she was seeing on his face: shame. It looked just as foreign as Ron’s sympathy had looked on his face that morning. What was Malfoy ashamed of? She didn’t even know that he was capable of that. She had seen a glimpse of it when she had seen his Mark, but this was something different altogether.

“Think, Granger,” he said suddenly, a slight growl in his voice. The sound unexpectedly turned her on. She felt wetness between her legs and felt embarrassed.

“What do you mean, ‘think?’” she asked, frustrated. “How am I supposed to know what is wrong with you?”

“You are the brightest witch of our age, are you not?” he asked. “I was gone last week. Think.”

She looked away from him and began to pace the small room, thinking, just as he had demanded. He had been gone a week. What would make someone disappear for a week that she should be able to figure out? It wouldn’t be anything specific to his personal life or any secrets he might have, or else he wouldn’t expect her to figure it out herself. She thought of unexplained absences she’d figured out before, or at least attempted to figure out. First year, they’d thought Snape had snuck up to the third floor to steal the Sorcerer’s Stone. They’d been wrong. Hagrid’s absence in fifth year had been caused by a special mission, but Malfoy had already said his absence wasn’t caused by Voldemort, and he sure as hell hadn’t been on a mission for the Order, she thought, remembering the way his Dark Mark stood out against his pale skin. Dumbledore was absent from the school a lot this year, but she hadn’t figured that one out yet. Come on, there had to be one she had figured out.

It clicked.

Lupin. She had figured out why Lupin went missing once a month. For a few days, maybe a week. She went pale, her back to Malfoy.

She turned around to face him.

“Last week was the full moon,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.

He didn’t argue. He stared at her resolutely, a trace of the shame still etched in his mouth, behind his eyes.

“You’re a werewolf,” she said.

 

 


	10. Laying Claim

Malfoy blinked, obviously trying not to betray anything in those gray eyes, but Hermione could hardly breathe. His face looked almost blurry. Her mind was moving a hundred miles an hour.

“Malfoy?” she choked out after a few moments.

“What?” he whispered. His voice was closer to her. She realized he had moved nearer to her without her realizing it. She hadn’t blinked in so long. Her eyes were foggy from it.

“Granger, blink. Breathe,” he said, as if he was acutely aware of her needs.

She obeyed.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

She didn’t know how to process this. Malfoy was not only a Death Eater but a werewolf as well. She had come to terms with the fact that she was sleeping with a Death Eater. Now she was sleeping with a werewolf too?

She caught herself, her thoughts, and realized she needed to regain control. There was nothing wrong with werewolves, she knew. Look at Lupin. Lupin was brave and smart and talented. He worked for the Order.

But Malfoy worked for Voldemort. He was a werewolf working for Voldemort, like that repulsive Greyback. She didn’t mean to, but she suddenly stepped back from Malfoy, putting space between them.

Malfoy stepped closer to her again. “Well, Granger. Are you going to run screaming from the room?”

Hermione looked up at him. His face was impassive. His eyes were cool. She considered his question. Was she going to run?

 _Why would you?_ her own voice asked within her head. She could see her inner-self standing with her arms crossed, shaking her bushy head.

“No,” she said quietly. She cleared her throat, forcing her voice to grow stronger. “No, I’m not.” She was pleased with that. She sounded resolute. Time to back it up with actions. She stepped forward tentatively so that the space between them was much smaller. She stared up at him. Behind his eyes, she could still see that shame that didn’t belong on a face like his, and in the way his brow was furrowed she could see something else. Was it worry?

“You should,” he said, his voice low.

“Why? Why would I?”

He exhaled loudly. “Granger, I’m a monster.”

She forced herself to exhale through her nose, a small laugh. “You’re not a monster, Malfoy. Monsters are scary.” She was trying to keep this light.

“I am scary. I’m…I’m awful.”

This wasn’t like him. She was so used to the gloating prat. When had this happened? How long had he been dealing with this?

She remembered the dark circles, the new level of paleness he’d taken on. She reached her arm out tentatively and grabbed his left forearm, rubbing her fingers over his Oxford shirt where she knew the Mark must be.

“You aren’t,” she said softly.

He looked as though he wanted to pull his arm away, but he didn’t. He stayed put, his breathing shallow. He didn’t say anything.

Hermione gave him a few moments of silence, softly stroking his forearm, when she said, “He did this to you, didn’t he?”

Malfoy paused. After staring into her brown eyes for a few moments, he nodded slowly. Despite herself, Hermione gasped.

“Why? Why would he do this? He doesn’t like…half-breeds,” she said, hating herself for using the word. “Why would he want one of his inner circle to be one?”

Malfoy swallowed hard. “Punishment,” he said.

“For what?”

Some shadow of fear crossed over his face. Hermione wanted badly to hold him, but she thought that would be going too far in that moment. She restrained herself, waiting to see if he was going to tell her what had happened, her fingers still rubbing his arm in what she hoped was a soothing manner.

“He offered me an assignment, and I said I couldn’t complete it,” he finally said. Hermione thought she heard a new tightness in his throat.

“What was the assignment?” she asked, her voice lowered back down to a whisper.

“I…I can’t,” he said, suddenly pulling away. He paced along the furthest wall of the broom cupboard, but the place was, after all, quite small. Hermione crossed the few steps toward him and pulled him back toward her.

“Yes, you can, Mal…Draco,” she said, her voice steelier and harder than she felt inside. She let his name glide off of her tongue. It felt foreign. It felt delicious, even in a moment as tense as this one.

He didn’t miss it either. His eyes softened as he looked down at her. “It’s to protect you, Hermione,” he said. She had never heard him say her name without a mocking tone, without resentment. It sounded beautiful, musical, like he was meant to say it all along. She felt flutters in her stomach and did her best to ignore them, remembering their agreement to keep this thing only physical.

Weren’t they crossing that line, though? She knew more about him than maybe anyone in the school, except students who had Death Eaters as fathers, maybe. Wasn’t this beyond just a physical relationship at this point?

Hermione tried not to overanalyze, shifting back into the conversation at hand.

She decided it would be best to work by intuition. She did what felt right. She pulled Malfoy in and wrapped her slender arms around his lean, toned frame, pressing her head against his chest and listening to his heartbeat. It seemed a little faster than normal, but it was strong.

She felt his nose burrow into her hair as it had during their past trysts. He breathed in deeply as though the scent of her hair might be the only air he was going to get that day. She realized in that moment that he would be hyper-sensitive to smells as a werewolf, even in his human form. Of course he was smelling her. But did that mean he liked her smell? Craved it, even?

He took a few more deep breaths of her scent and then rested his cheek on her hair. He sighed. “He wanted me to kill Dumbledore,” he said.

The baldness of his statement shocked her. Her eyes went wide, but he couldn’t see it. Kill Dumbledore? Her mind was racing once again.

“But…but you said no?” she asked hopefully, not moving.

“My mother said no,” he said slowly, his voice once again sounding as though he might be on the brink of tears. “She said no, and he punished her in front of me. The Cruciatus Curse.” He shuddered. “He told her that she was a silly girl and needed to let me make my own decisions. That I was a man.”

Hermione felt as if all the air had gone from the room. She listened as though her life depended on it.

“My father was standing there too. I was trying to communicate with him. We couldn’t speak of course. He gave nothing away. He gave me no aid.” He paused. “So I turned to the Dark Lord and said, ‘I don’t think I will be able to successfully complete that mission, my Lord.’ Well, as you can imagine, he wasn’t a fan of that. He told me that I needed to try or die trying. I said, ‘Don’t you think I could be much more used to you alive than dead?’ He told me the only reason he had made me a Death Eater was for this purpose.

Finally, finally, my father did something. He said, ‘My Lord, Draco is only a boy. There is no way he could take on a fully trained wizard, especially not the likes of Dumbledore.’”

“Well at least your father said something eventually,” Hermione interjected, sounding hopeful.

Malfoy exhaled through his nose, a bitter sound. “That’s about the only thing.”

“What do you mean?” Hermione asked, breaking away from their comfortable hugging position to be able to look Malfoy in the eye.

“The Dark Lord said if I couldn’t help him, I had no business being a proper wizard anymore, and my father didn’t step in. He just looked between us like a lost puppy. The Dark Lord summoned Greyback, and Father just stared. Mother was wailing, scratching at the door. He made my father watch Greyback bite me. He made him watch.” Malfoy’s voice broke, and Hermione stared at him, full of horror. The awful things Voldemort was willing to do would never cease to shock and disgust her, she realized.

“When was this?” she asked him, trying to bring him back to the conversation.

When he met her eyes, she saw that his were glassy, and her eyes instantly pricked with tears in response. “This summer,” he said. “Only a couple of weeks after I took the Mark.”

“Oh, Draco,” she said, throwing her arms around his neck and pulling him close to her. As though he couldn’t resist, he wrapped his arms around her waist and drew her in tightly to him, taking control of the embrace. Hermione gave it to him. She wanted him to have whatever he needed to feel okay in that moment.

“Does anyone else know?” she asked quietly, her lips brushing his neck. She felt chills erupt on his skin.

“The professors,” he said. “They had to know why I was leaving once a month.” He paused. “I’m sure some of the Slytherins know, but they haven’t let on yet. They’re probably ashamed of me.” Once again, his voice seemed dangerously close to breaking.

Hermione looked up at him, taking his face in her hands. Her voice was stern when she said, “You listen to me. If they are ashamed of you, that just shows you how little you need them.”

“Hermione,” he said. She tried not to focus on how much she liked hearing him say her name and focused instead on what he was saying. “Just a few months ago, I was just like them. Half-breeds, they disgusted me. Now I am one. Can you imagine how disgusting I feel in my own skin?”

“There isn’t anything wrong with…half-breeds…or whatever you want to call them. There is nothing inherently wrong with werewolves. Sure, with pigs like Greyback, yes. But look at Remus Lupin.”

Draco rolled his eyes. “Oh, fantastic, now I get to be compared to Mr. Shabby Robed McWolfy.”

“Malfoy!” she said, slapping him lightly on the arm. “Lupin is brilliant, really. Maybe you two should talk. He might be able to help you out.”

“Oh yeah, that conversation would go swimmingly,” Draco said with another eye roll. “Yes, I think I will just stroll into the headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix, wherever they might be, and demand to speak to Lupin about a werewolf problem. That sounds reasonable.”

“Draco, you’re underage,” Hermione reasoned. “They will be willing to forgive you, to protect you.”

“And what about Potter and Weasley?” he challenged, staring right into her eyes.

She glanced away. “They’ll—er—they’ll come around.”

“Once they find out what’s going on between the two of us?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

She blushed deeply red. “I don’t see why they would have to find that out,” she said quietly, avoiding his eye.

“Hermione, you can’t expect me to run off to the Order with you and not…not _be_ with you,” he said. His voice sounded almost desperate. She felt herself becoming wet and felt almost impatient with herself. Now was not the time.

“Malfoy, this is just a physical thing, remember?”

“That might be what it is for you, but you’re forgetting something.” He began trailing kisses down her neck, causing her to sigh loudly despite herself. When he made it to her collarbone, he bit lightly and began to suck the skin, swirling his tongue around in hot circles. Although Hermione knew they needed to return to their discussion, she found herself moaning at the wet feel of him on her skin.

“Wh—what am I forgetting?” she asked breathlessly.

“The wolf,” he said. He growled and picked her up, slamming her back against the wall. Their mouths found each other hungrily, and neither one had the power to stop it. They were tearing at each other’s clothes. Hermione gasped as Malfoy literally tore her blouse open, growling again when he saw her creamy flesh before him. He quickly unclasped her bra and pulled it off, leaving her in just her open button-down. She was breathing erratically as he palmed her breasts and even more so as he pinched her left nipple and twisted it slightly. She squirmed under him and whimpered.

“Mine,” he growled suddenly into her ear.

She didn’t know why she was saying it, but she found herself exhaling into the skin of his neck, “Yours, yours.”

He didn’t seem to be able to take her admission because he groaned loudly, overcome with arousal. She could feel against her pelvis how hard he was for her, and she reached down and stroked his erection above his trousers.

“Take them off,” she whispered. This time she was the one to bite his neck, and he responded with another loud groan, reaching down quickly to unbutton his trousers with one hand while still keeping Hermione pressed against the wall. She found herself impressed at his strength and wondered why it hadn’t stuck out to her before.

“You didn’t seem this…this way the other times we’ve done this,” she said breathlessly, not wanting to call him animalistic.

“I was hiding,” he said. “The wolf in me was hiding.” His voice was husky and lower than normal. She found it made her even wetter.

He pulled his trousers down along with his boxer briefs, and she marveled slightly at his size, as she did every time she saw his dick. Before she had time to marvel much, though, his index finger was lightly rubbing her clit, making her moan. He claimed her mouth hungrily with his, and she kissed back as best she could while still moaning into his mouth. When she found his tongue, she began sucking on it lightly at first, and then with vigor, showing him what she wanted to do with him. Obliging, he let her off the wall and leaned against it instead. She sank to her knees and put her hand around his dick, pumping lightly. He hissed.

“Mmm, Hermione,” he said, completely lost in ecstasy as she put her mouth around him, taking him in slowly, painfully slowly. When she heard him say her name, she moved a bit faster, wanting to make him as turned on as she was. He wound his hands into her hair and pulled slightly. At first, she winced, but then she found she quite liked the sensation. He was pulling her hair while at the same time lightly pushing her onto his dick, showing her how badly he wanted—no, needed—her.

Draco apparently decided this wasn’t how he wanted to come. He wanted more. He pulled himself out of Hermione’s mouth and reached down, pushing her lightly onto her back on the floor.

“No, wait,” he said. “Sit up.”

She listened immediately, sitting up, waiting to see what he was going to do next. He pulled her shirt off lightly and then reached down to her skirt and unzipped it, sliding it off easily. That left her sitting in her red boy short underwear. She blushed as he leaned his head down and put his mouth on her panty line, inhaling deeply.

“Smell. So. Good,” he said as though intoxicated. He peeled off her underwear with his teeth, leaving her fully naked in front of him. He looked at her as though he’d never seen anything more enticing.

“Now, lie back,” he said, pushing her collarbone lightly so that she would recline onto the floor. She looked down at him curiously and moaned as he suddenly started stroking her clit again. With just one finger, he had her completely at his mercy.

“Mm, you’re so wet, aren’t you?” he asked her with a smirk.

She was so pleased to see him looking like his usual arrogant self. “Yes,” she whimpered. “For you,” she added boldly, trying not to feel embarrassed.

“For me?” he asked. “Well that’s quite generous, I must say.” He watched her writhe under his light touch, still smirking. “Well if this is all for me, I’d be a fool not to—” he leaned his head down toward her center, “—indulge.” Abruptly, he flicked his tongue at her clit once and then leaned away slightly.

Hermione moaned, unable to stop herself from saying, “Don’t tease,” in a husky sort of whine.

“If you insist, darling,” he said, and she found her stomach flipping over at him calling her that. Before she had time to process it, though, he had licked her fully, twisting and flicking his tongue in just the right way, alternating between her clit and her opening, getting it even wetter. She found her hands wound in his hair just as his had been in hers just a few minutes prior. She felt pressure building up inside of her, and she was bucking her hips to meet his mouth. He was lapping her up, clearly enjoying the taste. The sight of his arousal just from her taste combined with the fact that he had started flicking her clit with his finger while giving the full force of his tongue to her pussy sent her over the edge. She clenched her thighs tightly around his head, and she could feel him smiling against her wet skin.

She was breathing loudly when he sat up and moved toward her, his dick bobbing along with his movements. She eyed it, wanting him badly. She knew she wouldn’t have to wait long. His eyes were completely clouded with need for her.

“Mine?” he asked, positioning himself above her and looking down at the way she needed him, how erratic her breathing was, how much he affected her.

She locked eyes with him, trying to think clearly. Was she his? He had certainly claimed her physically. She thought of the way she wanted to protect him, wanted him to come with her to the Order. She didn’t want him to be in danger. She didn’t want him to hate himself for what he was. To her, he was beautiful. Arrogant a lot of the time, sure. Full of himself, yes, but perhaps for good reason—he was, after all, a great student and a dynamite lover. But more than that, he was damaged and yet somehow still together. Scared and yet somehow resilient. Flawed and yet somehow…somehow someone she had been unable to avoid.

“Yours,” she breathed. He pushed inside of her and leaned his head down to bite her neck once again, sucking and kissing as he moved down her skin, sliding in and out of her as he did. They’d fucked several times before, of course, but somehow this felt like the first one that had really counted, the first one that meant something.

He drove himself in and out of her, reaching down to rub her clit as he did, until she couldn’t take the pressure inside of herself anymore. As he felt her clench around his dick, he lost himself too, coming hard.

He leaned down, sweat dripping off of his forehead onto her chest, and placed his ear against her heart, listening as she just had earlier. Her heart moved more slowly than his, but it was just as steady.

He waited for her breathing to go back to normal and looked up at her with a smirk. She looked down at him, her eyes warmer than he’d ever seen them, especially when directed at him.

“Mine?” she asked, echoing his earlier demands.

Without any hesitation, he answered, “Yours.”  


	11. Making Plans

“So what now?” Draco asked after a while, raising his cheek off of Hermione’s chest to look into her eyes.

Hermione sighed and ran her fingers through Draco’s soft hair, not ever wanting to get up from the euphoria they were both coming down from. “What do you mean?” she asked.

“What do we do now?” he said.

“About us, you mean?”

“Obviously,” he said, his signature drawl back in action.

She looked at him carefully. He was completely serious. He wanted something more with her. He hadn’t been caught up in the moment, she realized, because here was, even after they were finished having sex, and he was still saying the same thing. “What do you want to do?” she asked, genuinely curious about his answer.

He sat up and shrugged. “I want you to be mine,” he said.

“I already told you I am,” she said quietly.

He smirked slightly. “I thought you were just saying that to appease me.”

His frankness was a turn-on for her. She wished he had always been this way. “I don’t generally say things I don’t mean, Malfoy,” she said.

“I thought we might be more on a first-name basis at this point, Granger,” he said, stressing her last name.

“Oh, I think we might be, at least part of the time anyway,” she said, smirking back at him.

“Hermione,” he said, his playful tone dropping into a lower, more serious one. “I really do want you to be mine.”

“And I will be,” she said simply.

“I don’t want to hide it.”

Her eyes widened. “Well, we can’t exactly go parading it around here given your current situation.” She glanced down at his left arm. His arm flinched involuntarily, as if he might be able to hide it from her.

“You said…” he started, but then he shook his head.

“About going to the Order, you mean?” she asked, reaching over to take his hand gently.

He let her fingers slide between his and looked down to see them interlock. He nodded slowly.

“Would that be something you would actually be willing to do?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.

He sat silent in thought for a few moments. Finally, he said, “I think it’s my only choice.”

Hermione studied him. “I don’t think that’s true, really. You could keep doing what you’re doing, if you’re okay with that.”

He sighed. “You know I’m not. It’s atrocious. I feel disgusting all the time, and not even because I’m some half-breed. Plus, I’ll probably end up dead. I already said I wouldn’t be able to kill Dumbledore. And…” he said trailing off.

“What?” she asked gently, squeezing his hand.

“I can’t have you if I stay, Hermione.” He paused. “I thought I could just fuck you and get on with my life. I thought that’s all my feelings were: pent up sexual frustration. But that’s not it. You’re…you’re mine. I can’t just leave you behind now. I can’t forget you.”

Hermione felt her throat growing tight. This was practically a declaration of love from Draco Malfoy. She knew that a lot of his connection to her was the wolf in him. He had grown to care about her, and the wolf had marked her as his. She absently touched the spot near her collarbone that Draco bit and sucked on over and over. She really had been marked. She found that she didn’t mind in the least.

“Well, I can’t just forget about you either,” she said honestly.

“There’s one thing I can’t work out, though,” he said, making eye contact with her and not looking away. The brown of her irises soothed him in a way he didn’t know another person’s eyes possibly could. Looking into them felt like collapsing into bed after a terribly long day.

“What?” she asked, her full lips staying slightly parted after she’d said the word.

“My parents,” he said. “I can’t jump ship and leave them there. He will kill them just as retribution.”

“Do they want to leave?” Hermione asked, not breaking his intense eye contact. She, too, was mesmerized by his eyes, the stormy gray somewhat perplexing but also completely familiar in some weird way.

“Yes, I think so,” he said. “They haven’t been able to outright tell me that since the Dark Lord has taken up residency in our house, but I see the way they look at him. They’re disgusted with him, and they’re scared for us, for me. I think if they had a way out, they would take it.”

Hermione frowned, thinking hard. How could they pull this off?

“Let me ask you this,” she said. He nodded, indicating that she should go ahead. “Do you think…I mean do you think your parents could learn to accept things with…us?” she asked uncertainly. Her stomach was in knots.

Draco scrunched up his eyebrows, considering her question. “Er…” he said.

Her stomach dropped, and it must have shown on her face because he quickly added, “No, no, please don’t get offended.”

She wasn’t used to hearing such a soft, desperate tone from that mouth. She raised her eyebrows. “How am I not supposed to get offended?”

“Okay, I get your point,” he said, still sounding desperate. “But just hear me out. They have had their beliefs, right or wrong, for a really long time. It’s not that they _couldn’t_ learn to accept us, but it would take some time and a lot of patience for everyone involved.” He looked down at his hands. “They’ve already had to deal with their son becoming a werewolf. Surely they can deal with him being a blood traitor too.”

He sounded so small. She wanted to wrap her arms around him and tell him nothing was wrong with him, but she couldn’t bring herself to comfort him about his family’s (and up until very recently his own) blatant racism. She would never understand blood purity mania, and she wouldn’t indulge the idea with any sympathy.

Resolving herself to be strong, she said, “If they can get over it, I might have a plan.”

He looked up at her again, and she saw a spark of hope in his gray eyes.

“All right, listen. We will have to talk to Dumbledore.”

“But,” he said, cutting her off.

She cut him off right back. “No, listen, Malfoy,” she said sternly. “You have to hear me out. I know it isn’t like you to run to Dumbledore, or probably to anyone, but Dumbledore is the head of the Order of the Phoenix. We have to talk to him about this.”

He sighed. “All right, go on.”

“Okay, so we go to Dumbledore. We tell him you’ve been Marked and that you’re a werewolf.” Draco winced. Hermione ignored it and went on. “We tell him you never wanted to be Marked, and we tell him that you told Voldemort you couldn’t kill him. That should help gain his trust, don’t you think?”

Malfoy laughed. “Yeah, I guess it should gain his trust since I didn’t want to kill him. Or knew I couldn’t do it. Whatever, what’s the difference?”

Hermione studied him briefly and went on. “Right, so we do that. Then we will figure out a way to lure your parents to the school. Voldemort won’t think anything of it. We can convince them you were injured in a Quidditch game or something like that. They’ll rush up here, and then we will confront them. You’ll tell them about us and tell them that you have Dumbledore’s confidence, and we will ask them to come with us.”

He stared at her dumfounded. “Ask them to come with us to the Order?” he asked.

She nodded as if this should be as plain as day.

“Hermione, they…they can’t come with us to the Order. The Order hates them. They’ll kill them on sight.” He looked frantic, his eyes wide, the little color that existed in his cheeks gone.

“The Order is a lot more forgiving than Voldemort. Maybe you’re forgetting that.”

He shook his head. “There is no way they will forgive my father.”

Hermione thought back to all the awful things Lucius Malfoy had done, from giving Ginny Riddle’s cursed diary to torturing Muggles at the World Cup to being present when Harry and Voldemort battled in the graveyard. And just last year, he had been there at the Ministry trying to get the prophecy from Harry. He had been there when Sirius died. He had tried to kill them all.

Maybe Draco was right. Maybe the Order couldn’t forgive all of that.

But…but if he wanted away from Voldemort, if he was willing to really change, Hermione thought, they would be forced to help him. That’s just the kind of people that were in the Order. They couldn’t turn away from someone who needed help so desperately, especially when he had a wife and a child who needed out too.

“You may be right,” she said. Draco’s face fell as though he had hoped she would contradict him. She went on, “They may not forgive him, at least not completely, but they will help him because they want to see Voldemort dead. They want his supporters to leave him weak and vulnerable. And they’ll also see that you and your mother won’t come without your father, and they will not be able to turn away from helping you and your mother. She hasn’t done anything except marry someone who ended up being a Death Eater, and you’re not of age. They will want to help you, so, by extension, they will help your father.”

Draco thought over her words. Finally, he smiled and said, “You really are the brightest witch of our age.”

She felt her cheeks burn, and she smiled. “Do you want to do this?”

His smile fell off of his face, but he nodded. “When?” he asked.

“Let’s go and talk to Dumbledore.”

“Tonight?” he asked, panic rising up in his voice.

“I see no point in waiting,” she said matter-of-factly. “The longer we wait, the more chance to back out you’ll have. I don’t want you doing that. You’re mine.” Her voice had become husky during the last two words, and he responded with a light growl. He leaned forward and wrapped her in his arms abruptly, and she felt chills erupt on her skin at his possessiveness and her surprise at how much she liked it.

When he pulled away from her, he cleared his throat and said, “So…what, we talk to Dumbledore, we fake the Quidditch injury, and then what?”

“Then we go to the Order’s headquarters and hide you,” she said simply.

“What about school?” he asked.

“To hell with school,” she said, and he found himself completely shocked to hear Hermione Granger say such a thing. “If we don’t survive this war, an education won’t mean a thing. We can come back to school when it’s safe. Once you and your family defect, it won’t be safe anymore.”

“Well, it won’t be safe for me,” he corrected her.

She eyed him warily. “You really don’t get it, do you?” She pointed at the spot on her collarbone. “I’m marked. I’m yours. If it isn’t safe for you, it isn’t safe for me.”

He eyed her tenderly for a few moments. She wanted him to burrow his face in her neck and kiss her until he found her lips, but she knew what that would lead to, and she knew that now wasn’t the moment for that, as good as it sounded.

He seemed to be thinking along the same lines, and he said, “All right, let’s go talk to the old codger.”


	12. Switching Sides

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How about one in Draco's POV this time? Here we go!

The stone gargoyle outside the headmaster’s office seemed to intimidate Draco somewhat. Hermione watched as he eyed the thing skeptically.

“Do you know the password?” Draco asked with a raised eyebrow. He wouldn’t be surprised if the Golden Girl of Gryffindor was privy to such information.

“Of course not,” Hermione said with a sniff. “But I think I have an idea.” She cleared her throat and addressed the stone gargoyle as if it were a person. “Er, excuse me,” she said. “We need to speak with the headmaster. It’s urgent and pertains to the safety of students in this school.”

Draco was not looking at the gargoyle. He was eyeing Hermione and trying not to laugh. So he was very surprised to hear the rumble of stone moving. He looked over and saw the gargoyle nodding at Hermione and turning to reveal a spiral staircase.

Hermione beamed.

“Er, good going,” Draco said, still somewhat unused to giving Hermione compliments. He knew he was going to have to get used to it since they were apparently going to embark on quite the adventure as a pair.

Hermione led the way up the stairs, her head held high. Draco could tell she had no doubt they were doing the right thing in approaching Dumbledore. He wished he could feel as confident. All he could think is that his parents were going to get murdered and that the Dark Lord would be after him as soon as he finished with his parents.

When they reached the top of the stairs, Hermione reached up slightly to grab the griffin door knocker, and Draco snorted.

“What?” she asked, still holding the knocker.

“It’s a griffin,” he said, rolling his eyes.

Hermione smirked but ignored him, choosing instead to knock lightly on the door three times.

“Enter,” they heard from inside. Draco knew it was the voice of the headmaster, and his palms grew sweaty at the thought. Could he really do this? Could he betray the Dark Lord? He wasn’t made for this. He was made to go with the flow and do as his parents told him. They hadn’t told him to do this. Sure, they seemed unhappy with the current situation, that being the Dark Lord living in their home. Still, they hadn’t told him to turn his back on the Dark Lord. What if he was completely wrong in guessing that they would turn against the Dark Lord with him? What if they hated him for this?

He didn’t have time to think long. Hermione wasted no time in opening the door and reaching back to grab Draco’s hand and lead him into the circular office. Even as caught up as he was in his worry, Draco couldn’t help but look around at the office. He may not have liked the man who owned it, but he was fascinated immediately by all of his possessions and, Merlin, the books. He would have loved to have a long look around the place, but he knew that wasn’t in the cards when Dumbledore cleared his throat and said, “Ah, Miss Granger, Mr. Malfoy, what brings you here tonight, and, ah,” he said, glancing down at their linked hands, “Together?” His sparkling blue eyes were full of questions.

Hermione was blushing, clearly not used to addressing the headmaster on her own, that is to say without Potter on her side, but she spoke clearly anyway. “Draco needs to speak with you urgently.”

Draco felt like his jaw was glued shut. He didn’t know if he would be able to open his mouth and say the words he knew he needed to say, the words he knew were right. Hermione had, in a short amount of time, changed him. He felt the wolf inside him yearning to howl in approval at these changes.

Perhaps it was the wolf inside him who helped him find his voice despite his anxiety.

“Yes, sir, I do,” he said, surprised at how confident he sounded.

“Very well, why don’t you both take a seat?” Dumbledore said, gesturing at the two chairs in front of his desk.

Draco and Hermione obeyed, sitting down side by side. Their hands had broken apart as they sat down, but Hermione reached across reassuringly and took his hand again. He was relieved that she was the one who did so. He didn’t want to appear weak by reaching for her, but he needed her touch.

“What do you wish to discuss, Mr. Malfoy?” Dumbledore asked softly.

Draco took a steadying deep breath and decided letting everything out in one big rush was probably the best option he had. Besides, once he got started, he didn’t think he could stop. He said, “You probably know that the Dark Lord has taken up residence in my family’s home. He Marked me over the summer, sir. I didn’t really know why he was doing it, but I thought he might forgive my father for his blunder at the Ministry if I went through with it, so I did it. Besides, he would have just killed me if I had objected. Anyway, shortly after that, he revealed why he had done it. He had a mission for me.” He paused, but only for a few seconds, knowing if he stopped, he would get too scared to go on. “He wanted me to kill you this year at school.” He let those words hang there for a few seconds, but before Dumbledore could interject, he said, “I told him I didn’t think I could do it. He became very angry, as I’m sure you could have guessed.” Draco could not hide the bitterness in his voice. “He brought in Fenrir Greyback, the werewolf. He allowed him to bite me.” He hung his head.

Dumbledore sat in quiet contemplation for a few moments and said, “Very well. So you are a Death Eater and a werewolf. What made you come talk to me today, Mr. Malfoy? What is the purpose of this meeting?”

Draco glanced over at Hermione who gave him a small smile, a smile that told him he must keep going. “I want out, sir,” he said. “I want out. I chose wrong. I should have let him kill me rather than Mark me. This isn’t a life.”

Dumbledore nodded. “You are young, Draco,” he said, his voice low and soft. “It says less about you that you made a grave error than it does that you have recognized your error and are now trying to fix it.”

Draco was embarrassed to find that his throat was tight. He had never cared much for Dumbledore, so he was surprised to find that he actually cared what the man thought of him. He supposed it was because even if he didn’t care for him personally, he was still a symbol of good. The idea that Dumbledore could still think positive things about him must mean that Draco himself was not all bad.

Dumbledore went on, “But what of your parents?”

Draco nodded absently. “I can’t leave without them,” he said simply.

“Will they come with you?” Dumbledore asked, his blue stare piercing into Draco’s gray one.

Deciding to ignore any nagging doubts that might be in his own head, Draco said, “I think they will, sir. I see the way they look at the Dark Lord. I see how uncomfortable they are with having him in their home, around me.”

“Ah, Mr. Malfoy, but discomfort and the willingness to turn their backs on him are two very different things, wouldn’t you say?”

Draco swallowed hard. “Yes, sir,” he said. “But once they know that I am desperate to get out, once they know I have made up my mind, I think they will come with me. They love me, I know they do.”

Dumbledore studied him for a few moments. “How do you intend to get your message to them?” he asked.

Hermione cut in, “I had an idea about that, actually, sir.”

“Of course you do, Miss Granger. I was wondering where exactly you fit into this.”

Hermione blushed again. Despite everything going on, Draco couldn’t help but think about how lovely the pink hue looked on her cheeks. She said, “Well, sir, Draco and I are…are…” She trailed off, apparently embarrassed to discuss such things with the most prominent wizard in the world.

“I would hazard a guess that you are something of an item?” Dumbledore said, glancing down at their still-interlocked hands with a twinkle in his eye and a smirk on his mouth.

“Yes, sir,” they said at the same time, and then they both embarrassedly glanced at each other. Well, at least they knew they were on the same page now. Things, after all, had not been official up until now. How ludicrous, Draco thought, that he had just basically declared Hermione as his girlfriend for the first time in front of Albus Dumbledore.

“May I ask how such a thing came to be? Knowledge of your hatred for each other extends to the staff as well as the students,” he said, still smirking.

“Er…” Hermione said. Again, she didn’t seem capable of talking about matters such as these with Dumbledore. Draco sighed, knowing he would have to cut in.

“Well, sir, McGonagall…I mean, Professor McGonagall…assigned us to a month’s worth of detentions together, and I suppose we just…er, got to know each other better,” Draco said, feeling a blush now creeping onto his face. He did not normally blush. He felt Hermione squeeze his hand tightly, and he glanced over at her, smiling slightly. Her brown eyes were alight with the private joke of what exactly had gone on in all those broom cupboards.

“I see,” Dumbledore said, looking at both of them. “Very well, Miss Granger, what is your plan of action?” He sat back, waiting for Hermione to talk.

Draco could tell Hermione was overwhelmed that Dumbledore valued her opinion enough to listen, and then he felt flummoxed at how well he was getting to know her in such a short span of time. He could read her tense shoulders as easily as a book. He could judge her thatched eyebrows like he could judge the distance of a dive on a broom. She was becoming second nature to him, like being with her was some instinct that had been buried deep inside him.

He remembered the wolf. Of course it felt natural. She was his mate.

“Right, well, we thought we could fake a Quidditch injury and summon his parents to the school. Voldemort wouldn’t find anything odd about them coming here to see their injured son. Once they were here, we could tell them that Draco wanted to join our side, and we could try to convince them to join as well. If they do, then we can hide Draco and his parents.”

“And what about you?” Dumbledore asked.

This caught Hermione off guard, Draco could tell. “Me, sir?” she asked.

“Will you go with them? I assume you won’t be parted from Draco?” When Hermione only muttered _er_ sounds, Dumbledore continued, “I gather it would be nearly painful for you two to be separated. It is common knowledge that once a werewolf attaches himself emotionally to someone else, they are mated. They are to remain together.”

“Oh,” Hermione said, breathing out a sigh of relief. Draco nearly laughed as he realized she thought Dumbledore had been implying that she couldn’t be separated from him physically, not emotionally. “Yes, well, the plan was that I would go with them.”

“And what about your schooling?” Dumbledore asked, mirroring Draco’s earlier concern.

With that, Draco saw a familiar fire build up in Hermione’s eyes, one that was filled with protectiveness and care. The wolf was howling inside him once again. He could feel his chest swelling just looking at the heat in her eyes.

“What about my schooling?” she asked, her voice almost icy, almost a growl. “I can always come back to school. I can always learn spells later. What I can’t do later is not die. What I can’t do later is stay with him and make sure he isn’t killed for risking his life by joining our side. What am I supposed to do? Sit here with my nose in a book taking notes while wondering if Draco is dead or not? I don’t think so.”

Dumbledore had a small smile on his face. Draco wasn’t sure why. If Hermione had been addressing him with such cold fury, he might be hiding under the desk by now. “Just what I expected you to say, Miss Granger. The correct answer indeed. Though you always seem to have those. I must say I am not surprised.”

Hermione was back to blushing.

“Very well, that plan all seems in order,” Dumbledore said. “We can offer you and your family the highest protection possible by the Order. A Fidelius Charm is in order. You will have to choose a Secret Keeper.”

“Hermione,” Draco said immediately. He again felt Hermione squeeze his hand.

“A good thought, Mr. Malfoy, but since Miss Granger has made it clear she will be leaving school with you, it is not a viable choice. You will need to choose someone else.”

Hermione sighed next to him, and Draco looked over at her.

“What?” he said, raising his eyebrow.

“I know who it needs to be, but there are some things that will have to be done first,” she said, looking down at their interlocked hands.”

“Who?” Draco asked, expecting the name of someone from the Order of the Phoenix.

“It needs to be Harry,” Hermione said, and Draco felt his stomach drop.

“Potter?” he asked incredulously. “He hates me. He will probably sell me to Voldemort.”

“Harry would never do something like that, not to you, not to anyone!” Hermione said, that protective fire back in her eyes. Draco realized he was in the position Dumbledore had just been in, on the receiving end of her protective fury, and he seriously considered clambering behind Dumbledore’s desk and hiding.

“He won’t accept us, Hermione,” he said, keeping his voice even.

“You don’t know him, Draco,” she said, her eyes narrowed. “He loves me. I am like a sister to him.”

“Exactly! He is going to be right pissed that you’re consorting with a Death Eater!”

“He will be at first,” Hermione agreed. “But when you love people, you learn to accept the choices that make them happy.”

Draco was stopped short at the notion that he made Hermione happy enough to risk telling her best friends about their relationship knowing good and well it wasn’t going to go over like a breezy Sunday afternoon.

“Well said, Miss Granger,” Dumbledore interjected. He paused and said, “Right, so I think we should give you the rest of the week to talk to Mr. Potter, and, I think, Mr. Weasley to try to get them to agree to all of this. On Saturday, we will fake the Quidditch injury.”

“Sir, there isn’t a match on Saturday,” Draco argued.

“Precisely, Mr. Malfoy,” Dumbledore said with a smile. “If your father remembers that, he may well know that the message is a secret one. He may work even harder to conceal what is going on from the Dark Lord. And if he doesn’t realize there wasn’t a Quidditch match, it won’t matter. Your parents will be worried about you and show up either way.”

Draco couldn’t argue with that.

Dumbledore continued, “I will wait with the two of you in the hospital wing on Saturday. Once your parents have arrived, we will discuss things with them and see what they think. I will have a safe house ready for the four of you by then. I must ask you, Mr. Malfoy, what you plan to do if your parents will not go with you.”

Draco’s eyebrows scrunched together, his mouth set in a hard line. It only took a moment or two for him to know the answer in his gut, as much as it hurt him to think about it. “I’ll go without them,” he said, “But I don’t want them to know that. I want them to think it is nonnegotiable.”

Dumbledore nodded. “I understand perfectly.” He paused. “Well, I shall see you on Saturday afternoon, then,” he said. “Meet me in the hospital wing at, let’s say, two o’clock?”

Draco could have laughed at his tone. He could have been making casual tea arrangements. Instead, they were talking about Draco and Hermione abandoning their studies and defying the most evil wizard in the world.

Hermione seemed to take that as their dismissal. She stood up, pulling Draco with her, and said, “Very well, Professor. We will see you then.” She started walking to the door, dragging Draco behind her. When they were nearly to the door, Draco stopped and turned around to face the headmaster.

“Thank you, sir,” he said, something that felt unnatural but something he knew must be said.

“Thank you, Draco,” Dumbledore said, nodding. “For making the right choice.”

The walk back to the prefects’ dorms was nearly silent, though they still walked hand-in-hand. Draco could feel Hermione’s brain whirring next to him, trying to formulate the best way to talk to Potter and Weasley about their new, but apparently mutually serious, relationship. When they walked into the common room, they turned and faced each other, both of their faces serious.

“Should I?” Draco asked, nodding toward the doorway that led to the boys’ side of the dormitories.

Hermione considered his question and then shook her head. “Seems silly, doesn’t it? We are about to leave school and go into hiding together.”

He lifted her chin with two of his fingers, making her look him in the eye. “Hermione, that doesn’t mean you’re obligated to do anything that makes you uncomfortable,” he said seriously, surprised at his own tenderness. “You can still sleep separately from me, if you’d like.”

She smiled. “Thank you, Draco,” she said. “But the thought of sleeping without you oddly makes me feel sick right now, so come on.”

Once again, she was dragging him by the hand, but knowing there was a warm bed with Hermione Granger in it waiting for him on the other side of her tugging made him a much more willing follower this time around.


	13. A Summons

Lucius Malfoy was holed up in his study on a lovely October Saturday afternoon simply so he could avoid dealing with any of the Death Eaters that might be freely roaming his house at the moment. He thought bitterly of the time before the Dark Lord had returned, a time when he’d enjoyed political gains and his wealth without having to dirty up the Malfoy name once again with Death Eater affiliations. People had actually begun to think he had changed. He had begun to think so too. Things had been at an all-time high with Narcissa. They’d even discussed adopting another child, a little girl, since they knew Narcissa would not be able to carry another baby to full-term, especially after the hard time she had had with Draco all those years before. They’d been looking into agencies and were even thinking of discussing the idea with Draco, who was so accustomed to being an only child, when Lucius had felt that awful burn on his forearm, the one he’d thought had been extinguished for good.

At first, he had tried to be optimistic. “He’s going to take over, Narcissa,” he had told his wife. “And I will be his right hand man. Things will be fine. There will be a new normal, and _then_ we can think about that little girl.”

Narcissa had sniffed and walked away wordlessly, and Lucius had felt her drifting away from him ever since.

After his blunder at the Ministry last year, though, there was no optimism left in him. He was surprised every day that the Dark Lord had not killed him after that. He was no longer his right hand man, despite the fact that he had served a stint in Azkaban for the Dark Lord. He didn’t see it that way, Lucius supposed. He saw it as Lucius serving time for his own mistakes, completely dissociating himself from said mistakes.

And now the worst had happened. Maybe worse than the worst. He already thought it would be the worst for the Dark Lord to Mark Draco, but now he had not only Marked him but had him bitten by that filthy beast Fenrir Greyback too. Lucius had felt positively murderous with rage, but what was he supposed to do? He was no match for the Dark Lord, and any interference with what he wanted would probably have ended up with the death of all three Malfoys. Lucius couldn’t stand the thought of his wife and son cold and dead, nor could he stomach the idea that the Malfoy line would be swiftly extinguished all because of his poor choice to become a follower of such a maniac.

So all he could do was pull Draco out of school once a month so he could take his Wolfsbane at home and curl up in his room as a docile wolf. He was determined not to let him out of his room, fearful that the Dark Lord would be disgusted by his half-breed state and kill him just for sport. He was surprised that hadn’t happened with Greyback yet, but, Lucius reminded himself, Greyback was a vicious killer and enjoyed murdering Muggles and women especially, which served the Dark Lord’s interests nicely. Draco was no killer, nor did Lucius want him to become one.

His thoughts were interrupted by a tapping at the window. Lucius looked over to see an owl he didn’t recognize. Furrowing his brow, he crossed the room in a few quick strides to take the letter from the bird. When he flipped it over, he saw that it was stamped with the Hogwarts seal. His heart raced. Was Draco in trouble? Had he been found out as a Death Eater already? Or worse…had he attacked someone? The full moon was over, but there were still lingering wolfish traits the rest of the month. That, combined with his already-present tendency toward aggression, could be disastrous.

He slit open the letter and read. When he was finished, he raced from the room as quickly as he could without moving in an all-out sprint. He ran up a staircase and down a long hall to the bedroom he shared with Narcissa. He threw the door open to find his wife lying on their bed reading a book.

“Yes?” she asked, without even looking away from the book.

Even in a moment of such panic, Lucius found himself wishing she wasn’t so cold to him, though he understood that he fully deserved it. “It’s Draco,” he said, which caused her to put the book down and look up at last.

“What is it, Lucius?” she asked, her pretty blue eyes wide.

“He has been injured in a Quidditch match,” he said carefully, knowing full well there was no match today. Still, maybe Narcissa didn’t know that. Maybe her ignorance would help her today. She was no good at Occlumency, he knew.

“Is he all right?” she asked quickly, standing up and grabbing her wand from the bedside table, as if ready to heal their son right there despite his absence.

“I’m not sure how extensive the injuries are,” Lucius said, worried lines in his forehead appearing. “Dumbledore has requested that we come up to the school immediately.” Lucius was trying to work through the various scenarios that this letter could have been caused by. If there was no Quidditch game, was Draco injured by something else? Was he not injured at all? Maybe this was a trap by the Order of the Phoenix. But why would they want to trap Lucius? It was no secret that he had fallen in the Dark Lord’s ranks. Surely they didn’t think they could lure the Dark Lord there by holding he and his wife hostage. The Dark Lord would let them rot there, he knew.

“We must go then,” Narcissa said at once. “Should…I mean, do we need to alert anyone we will be leaving?”

Lucius ground his teeth. He hated the idea that he _did_ in fact need to let someone know if he wanted to leave his own house to go see his own son at his school, but the fact of the matter was that he did.

“Yes, come. We must go speak to him before we leave.”

The Dark Lord was in a parlor downstairs sitting in an armchair in front of the fire. He was perusing the latest Daily Prophet and looking shockingly comfortable. Lucius could hardly stand to see his translucent bare feet on the plush threadbare rug, so he averted his eyes, staring instead at the back of the armchair that the vile man was sitting in.

“Lucius, what is wrong? You look as though someone has just died,” he asked in his high voice.

“I’ve just had a letter from Hogwarts,” Lucius said, careful not to say it was from Dumbledore himself. “My son is in the hospital wing. He’s been injured.”

“Injured?” the Dark Lord asked. “How has he been injured?”

“The letter said it was in a Quidditch match. He plays Seeker for Slytherin.”

“I see,” the Dark Lord said, his eyes narrowed. “I would have thought a good pureblood boy like Draco would know how to stay on his broomstick without becoming injured. One might think he was raised by wolves.” Amused by his own joke, the Dark Lord laughed for several moments, unashamed that he was the only one laughing.

“Yes, quite idiotic of him to get injured,” Lucius choked out through his anger. “But I do think it would look quite unbecoming if we didn’t even go check on him when the school has summoned us directly.”

“Indeed,” the Dark Lord said. “Go, and make sure our youngest Death Eater is all right. I will need him functioning fully when he gets out of school this winter break. Fenrir has big plans for his new comrade.” He was smiling again, his red eyes alight with glee.

“Very well,” Lucius said, bowing his head to hide his furious face. “Farewell, my Lord.” He turned to face Narcissa, who’d been waiting by the parlor door, and grabbed her roughly by the arm, spinning to Apparate them on the spot.

They arrived in Hogsmeade and began the walk to the school in silence for a few moments before Narcissa finally spoke. “I will not have my son running around with that scoundrel Greyback. He is not an animal. It isn’t his fault what happened to him.” Her voice was made of steel.

Lucius inhaled and held his breath for a couple of seconds, something he frequently did to calm himself. “I know, Narcissa,” he said curtly. “We will figure something out. Draco will end up killed if he goes with Greyback.”

“He’s no killer,” she agreed, echoing his earlier thoughts.

“No, he isn’t. He’s more like you than he realizes,” he said.

He could tell Narcissa was taken aback by the sudden shift toward herself. “What do you mean?” she asked, her voice losing a little of its iciness.

“He’s not like me. I’ve killed. I’ve done awful things. You haven’t. You may have stood back and let me do them, but you would never have been able to do them yourself. You have to _mean_ those curses, and I don’t think you could ever mean them.”

“I could,” Narcissa corrected him, looking ahead at the outline of Hogwarts Castle. “I could if my son’s life was in danger.”

* * *

They found that the wards at Hogwarts had already been set to let them in, so they wasted no time in rushing up to the hospital wing. Lucius’s heart was beating harder and faster than it had in some time.

“Narcissa,” he said, grabbing his wife’s shoulder and turning her to face him. They were in the corridor that would lead them to the hospital wing.

“What, Lucius?” she spat out, clearly eager to get to her son.

“I have to tell you something,” he said quietly, looking around to make sure no one was around to overhear them.

“Get on with it then,” she said with a huff.

He looked around once more before saying, “There was no Quidditch match today.”

Her eyes widened. “Then why have we been summoned here? Do you think Draco has been injured some other way? Do you think this is a trap?” She was the one looking frantically around the hall now.

“I’m not sure,” Lucius said honestly. “But I wanted you to be aware so you’re ready to duel if it comes down to that.”

Narcissa nodded. She and Lucius had always made a formidable dueling team. She was confident that they could defend themselves if they were not wildly outnumbered. “Let’s go,” she said. “Our son is waiting.”

They walked down the rest of the corridor quickly and wordlessly, opening the doors to the hospital wing and bracing themselves as though they might be met with an onslaught of hexes. Lucius’s hand was inside his robes, prepared to whip his wand out.

The sight that met them, though, made them drop their arms at their side and look back and forth at each other in confusion. Two couches and an armchair had been conjured in place of the first few beds in the hospital wing. In the armchair sat Albus Dumbledore. On one of the couches sat their son next to—Lucius shook his head to see if he was seeing this correctly—Potter’s Mudblood, Hermione Granger.

“Hello, Mother, Father,” Draco said, nodding his head. He appeared unharmed. Lucius felt unease growing in his stomach. What was his son up to?

“Draco,” Lucius said, his voice low. “What the devil is going on here?”


	14. Amends

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To make up for not posting last week, here is a second post this week!

“Father,” Draco said, his voice a low warning. He stood up and subtly stood in front of Hermione, protecting her from any possible danger from his parents, though at the moment, the pair seemed too stunned to do much damage. “We need to talk,” Draco said.

“It seems we do,” Narcissa said.

Lucius seemed to have forgotten his wife’s presence temporarily. He was looking just past Draco at the head of unruly hair and the girl with the scared eyes who the hair belonged to. Hermione Granger. How did she figure into this…this…whatever Draco was about to get them into?

Narcissa grabbed Lucius’s arm softly, and he realized he couldn’t remember the last time she had touched him of her own accord. She guided him over to the empty sofa and sat down. He followed her lead. After a few moments, Draco’s posture relaxed, and he sat down next to Hermione Granger. To his parents’ incredulity, he took her hand.

“Mother, Father,” Draco said, “I would like you to properly meet Hermione Granger.” He paused. “My girlfriend.”

His parents started at him in stunned silence for a few moments before his father cleared his throat and said, “Is this some kind of joke?”

Hermione did her best not to let her face fall in disappointment. She had not, after all, expected Draco’s parents to warm to the idea immediately. She knew it would take time, possibly a lot of time. She reminded herself to be happy about the fact that Draco was proudly holding her hand in front of his parents and boldly introducing him as her girlfriend.

“No, it isn’t,” Draco said simply. “Hermione and I started a relationship several weeks ago, and it has become very serious.”

“Draco, what is the meaning of this?” Narcissa asked, searching her son’s face for some kind of explanation. “This girl is…well, she is…”

“Beneath him?” Hermione chimed in quietly.

“Well, I don’t mean to be rude, Miss Granger, but…” Narcissa said.

“But you’re going to be, so go ahead,” Hermione said, sounding much bolder than she felt.

“We just planned on Draco marrying…er, within our circle,” Narcissa said.

“Oh sod it all,” Lucius said. “You know good and well that we look down on Muggleborn witches and wizards.”

Hermione found herself surprised that Lucius had used the word Muggleborn instead of Mudblood. She found herself wondering if it was because Dumbledore was present. “Yes, I am well aware of your traditions,” she said briskly. “First of all, Draco and I are not married. We are dating. Second of all, he gets to make choices like this on his own. There are more pressing matters at hand here than who Draco has chosen to date. I think we should get to those matters.”

“Well said, Miss Granger,” Dumbledore said.

Lucius and Narcissa jumped. The headmaster had been silent enough thus far that they had almost forgotten his presence.

Eyes twinkling, Dumbledore said, “Lucius, Narcissa, I remember you both well from your time at school here.” Lucius’s mouth had gone into a thin line, and Narcissa was regarding the headmaster with wide eyes. Perhaps she had never spoken to him one-on-one, Hermione thought. She rather reminded her of herself when she talked to the headmaster without Harry there. Dumbledore continued, “You are both gifted in your practice of magic, and I think you might be able to agree that some poor choices have led you to a place you are not wholly satisfied with.”

“I don’t know what you’re referring to,” Lucius said coldly.

“Father,” Draco said, his voice a groan. “Listen to what he’s saying.”

“I am well aware that Lord Voldemort has taken up residence at your home, Malfoy Manor,” Dumbledore said. He paused, giving Lucius a chance to argue, but when the blonde wizard did not, Dumbledore proceeded. “Your son has come to me in desperation. He has told me of his predicament. Marked and bitten. Lord Voldemort has taken one of the most prominent families in our world and turned them into manservants. He has no respect for either of you anymore, Lucius.”

Narcissa appeared to have stopped breathing. She was regarding Dumbledore through those same wide eyes, and she looked scared and stiff. Lucius’s face was still a cold mask. Hermione was forcefully reminded of how well Draco could pull off that same cold mask when he needed to. She realized with a chill that the ability to put on that cool, uncaring mask might be the only reason the two Malfoy men were still alive.

“Draco, what do you have to tell your parents?” Dumbledore said, turning to face Hermione and Draco on the other sofa.

“Er,” Draco said, clearing his throat nervously. “I’m leaving.”

“What do you mean, you’re leaving?” Lucius said coldly.

“I am going to the other side. I’m leaving the Dark Lord.”

Lucius didn’t say anything. Instead, he studied his son. He observed the broadness of his shoulders, the straightness of his back. Despite the dire situation, he found himself proud of a son that had grown to stand up for his own convictions, even if standing up for those convictions might get him (and his father and mother) killed. It was so unlike Lucius, so much better than Lucius, he knew. Even though he felt proud, though, he had to be pragmatic.

“Draco, you cannot be serious,” Lucius said. “He will hunt you down. He will kill you. And do you think he will just spare your mother and me if you desert him?”

“No, I think he will kill you,” Draco said. Narcissa gasped. “That’s why I want you both to come with me.”

“Of all preposterous things,” Lucius said with a scoff.

“Father,” Draco said, his voice almost pleading now. “I see the way you look at him, the way you can hardly stand to be in a room with him. I know you regret your choices.”

“It doesn’t matter!” Lucius spat suddenly. “He will kill us all. He will find us.”

“That,” Dumbledore said, “Is where I come in.”

“What do you mean?” Narcissa said, beside herself with frustration and curiosity.

“I will hide you, your husband, your son, and Miss Granger,” Dumbledore said simply. “In a safe house protected by the Fidelius Charm as well as any and all protection the Order of the Phoenix can provide.”

“And why would you do that?” Lucius said, his eyes narrowed. “Why would you protect two Death Eaters?”

“Two reformed Death Eaters,” Dumbledore corrected him. “Who have seen the errors of their ways.” He paused. “Draco is a child, Lucius. He may be nearing manhood, but he is a child. It was abhorrent for Tom Riddle to Mark a child as a Death Eater.”

Lucius considered this for a moment and then nodded slowly.

Dumbledore continued, clearly encouraged by Lucius’s agreement. “I cannot deny a child who is trying to escape a life tainted by dark magic and an evil wizard. I just can’t. Draco refuses to go without his family. He doesn’t want to lose you to a madman. Can you blame him?”

Narcissa’s eyes had filled with tears as she looked at her son. Draco was carefully avoiding looking at his mother, knowing it would be his unraveling. The wolf inside him was telling him he had to be strong for Granger, and he resolved himself to remain unwavering.

“Mr. Malfoy?” Hermione said, her voice timid. Lucius looked at her with question marks in his eyes, and she quickly went on, “I care about your son a great deal. I’m sorry if that upsets you, but I’m sure you know that his…er, condition makes emotional connections like these even more quickly than they sometimes happen to people our age.”

Despite himself, Lucius smirked. This girl was quite practical. She seemed to be very aware of how young she was and how fleeting young love can be.

Hermione continued, determined not to be deterred by Lucius’s abrupt change in facial expression. “I care about him, and I would really prefer if he survived this war. Considering the fact that Voldemort has already turned him into a werewolf and that you have clearly lost favor with him, I’m not sure the chances of you three staying alive are very great. Let us help you. We can. The Order can do amazing things. Dumbledore can do amazing things.”

“Lucius,” Narcissa suddenly whispered.

He glanced over at his wife. Tears were freely flowing down her face now. “Narcissa?” he asked, reaching out to tenderly wipe away a few of the tears.

“This is our chance, Lucius,” she said quietly.

Draco felt his heart leap. Next to him, Hermione was trying to keep herself at bay, trying not to let herself get overwhelmed with hope. Dumbledore studied Lucius and Narcissa wordlessly, hoping they would come to the right conclusion together.

Lucius could not take his eyes off of his wife’s face. He suddenly realized how scared she looked. It wasn’t just her wide eyes. There was something deeper behind them, something that had been scared and tired for a very long time. Lucius realized his wife didn’t just _disagree_ with the choices he had made. She had begun distancing herself from him because she was _scared_ of this choices he had made.

He sighed. “When?” he said, turning his gaze to Dumbledore.

“Now,” he said.

* * *

 

Harry and Ron were in Ron’s dormitory, not wanting to be seen. They had the charmed Galleon sitting between them. Ron was at the head of the bed, leaning back against his pillows. Harry was sitting criss-cross-applesauce at the foot of the bed. They were both staring intently at the coin, waiting.

“I still can’t wrap my head around it,” Ron said with a sigh. Harry didn’t break his gaze from the coin. “Hermione and Malfoy, I mean.”

Harry sighed. “I know, Ron, but there really isn’t time to be hung up on the weirdness of it, is there? This is kind of dire. Life and death stuff.”

“I know,” Ron said quickly. “I’m not really _mad_ at her or anything. I’m just…worried.”

“Malfoy couldn’t have her under the Imperius curse,” Harry reminded him. They’d had this conversation already. “Dumbledore would have checked her for curses.”

“Right…” Ron said. He put his face in his hands and shook his head slightly. “It’s just not really like her to…to…”

“Consort with the enemy?” Harry said with a snort, remembering Ron’s absurd accusation in fourth year.

“Bugger off,” Ron said.

The coin glowed suddenly, and Harry picked it up. It was warm, but not hot enough to burn his skin. Around the coin’s edge, a message was appearing in Hermione’s handwriting. “Come now.”

Harry and Ron glanced at each other.

“What do you reckon?” Ron said.

“Time to go put our best friend in hiding with our worst enemy,” Harry said with a shrug. “Let’s go.”

* * *

 

To say the air was thick with tension when Harry and Ron arrived would be the understatement of the century. Harry found himself nearly laughing at the scene before him: Draco and Hermione, holding hands. Lucius and Narcissa, trying desperately not to stare at their hands. Dumbledore, looking around pleasantly as if nothing was wrong and he might start whistling at any moment.

“Ah, Harry, Ronald,” Dumbledore said happily.

Lucius Malfoy turned and eyed Harry with cold eyes. He knew if he could just grab the boy and take him back to the Dark Lord now, he would be rewarded, but he also knew that wasn’t a possibility with Dumbledore in the room. And, he thought, Draco would never forgive him because it would lose him his Mudblood love. He scoffed inwardly, still in disbelief about what was happening.

Seeming to notice Lucius’s demeanor, Dumbledore said, “Ah, maybe it is time to make a few amends before we do this. Harry, come here, please.”

Harry promptly obeyed, crossing the room to stand next to the headmaster. He glanced over at Hermione, who gave him a small, encouraging smile.

“Draco, Harry, I think it is time you shake hands.”

The two boys regarded each other. Harry’s face was nearly a grimace, but Draco tried his best to keep his neutral. He knew it would mean a great deal to Hermione if Draco could at least be civil with her two best friends, so he would try. He extended his hand first, a mostly un-Slytherin thing to do. Harry eyed it as though it might be coated in poison and, with a sigh, extended his hand to shake Draco’s briefly.

“Very well,” Dumbledore said, knowing he could not expect the two boys to hug and become best friends (at least not yet, he thought wryly to himself). He turned to Ron.

“And, Mr. Weasley, you’ll need to do the same.”

Ron looked as though he had been asked to donate a vital organ to someone, but, true to his Gryffindor bravery and keenly aware of Hermione watching him, he crossed the space between he and Malfoy in a couple of strides and stuck out his hand first, determined to beat Malfoy at his own game. Both boys had their eyes narrowed, but they shook hands anyway.

Lucius and Narcissa were watching these interactions with wide eyes. They could hardly believe their son was shaking hands with two boys he had complained about for years and cozying up to a girl he had seemingly detested since he met her.

“Now, Lucius, you will need to make amends with Harry,” Dumbledore said. When he could tell Lucius was going to protest, he said, “It is time to give up old hatreds, Lucius. It is the only way we can give you protection. Harry is one of the most important figures on our side of this war. You must respect him. More than that, you must be ready to protect him, as everyone on our side is.”

Lucius though this was asking rather a lot. Before today, after all, Harry had been number one on his hit list as a Death Eater. He glanced over at his son. Draco’s face was anxious. He needed his father to do this, for him, he realized.

Lucius extended his hand and said, “Very well. Mr. Potter, I’m sorry for any past nastiness between the two of us. I do hope we can put all of that behind us.”

Harry nodded curtly and said, “For the record, I don’t think you should have to protect me.”

Lucius thought about that and nodded, his regard for the black-haired boy raising slightly.

“Actually, funny enough, it’s Harry that will be protecting all of you, isn’t it?” Ron added.

Hermione glared at him briefly, clearly not pleased with his attempt at humor at a time like this.

“Yes, it is,” Narcissa said, no humor in her voice. She reached forward and took Harry’s hand, the only one to do it without being forced to by Dumbledore. “And we are grateful, Mr. Potter.”

Harry was taken aback by the softness of her voice and the gentle grasp of her hand on his own. He looked down at their hands briefly and then back up at her round, blue eyes. They weren’t like Malfoy’s at all, he realized. “Oh, it’s nothing,” he said awkwardly.

“Nonsense,” she said briskly, removing her hand from his and gaining an edge in her voice. “It’s a huge risk, and we are thankful you’re doing it given the animosity between you and our son. I recognize that you’re doing it mainly for Miss Granger, and we are just pleased that we can be included in this protection.”

Harry looked away from Narcissa to look over at Hermione, whose hand was once again intertwined with Draco’s. That would take a lot of getting used to, he thought. “I would do just about anything for Hermione,” he said.

Hermione felt Draco bristle next to her, which nearly made her laugh because she knew the wolf in him was being territorial, which was wholly unnecessary with Harry. She rubbed his hand soothingly, knowing Draco could not do much to keep his animalistic instincts at bay.

“Shall we, then?” Dumbledore asked, standing up and extending his arm.

Harry sighed, put his hand on Dumbledore’s arm, and held out his arm. Ron put his hand there, Hermione put hers on Ron’s, Draco put his on Hermione’s, Narcissa put hers on Draco’s, and, finally, Lucius rested his arm softly on his wife’s. She looked at him briefly with a small smile.

“Where are we going?” Lucius asked Dumbledore.

“Home,” Narcissa whispered softly, not knowing where Dumbledore might be taking them but knowing that there wouldn’t be a maniac waiting on the other end to torture her family.

Draco looked down at Hermione and smiled. “Home,” he agreed.


End file.
